The Parallel Crisis – The Price of Buying Time - June 2022

By the end of June 2022, my workers compensation claim had become about much more than an injury.

It had become a fight to stop every part of my life from collapsing.

The statutory scheme that was supposed to support my recovery had failed to enforce even its most basic obligations. There was still no meaningful rehabilitation. No proper injury management. No coordinated return to work. No financial stability.

Instead, I was left trying to hold together a complex chain of property settlements that had become my only way of protecting my future.

While regulators looked away, every day of delay was costing me.

This was the parallel crisis.

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“Save my home!!!!”

On 29 June 2022, another email arrived from my solicitor.

The vendor’s patience had run out.

Settlement had already been delayed. The vendor was now threatening to terminate the contract unless new conditions were accepted immediately.

My response wasn’t carefully worded.

It wasn’t strategic.

It came from someone whose entire future depended on systems that had already failed her.

“Save my home!!!!”

Three words.

That was all I had left.

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Every day had a price

The vendor eventually agreed to one final extension.

But it came at a staggering cost.

To keep the contract alive, I had to agree to:

• increase the purchase price by $15,000
• pay default interest from 27 May 2022
• authorise the immediate release of my original 10% deposit
• transfer an additional $58,000 into the vendor’s solicitor’s trust account
• pay the vendor’s additional legal costs
• pay additional legal costs to my own solicitor arising from the delay. 

This was survival because SIRA NSW doesn’t enforce statutory compliance on ALL KEY STAKEHOLDERS! 

Every one of those costs flowed from delays that should NEVER have existed if the workers compensation system had simply operated lawfully.

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The Melbourne property had already been sacrificed

One detail hidden amongst these emails says everything.

I wrote:

“I’ve signed a contract of sale … with a quick settlement.”

The Melbourne investment property wasn’t being sold because I wanted to.

It had become the mechanism for a security swap that would allow me to complete the purchase of my home.

I explained that I’d already asked the agent to negotiate additional compensation with the vendor to allow enough time for that settlement to occur.

Then I wrote:

“I’m doing my best. I need others to do their best as well.”

I wasn’t asking anyone to rescue me. I was asking people to do the jobs they had been entrusted to do.

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I was becoming visibly unwell

Throughout these documents, something else becomes impossible to ignore.

Almost every email contains an apology.

It’s not because I had done anything wrong, but I was becoming too sick to keep up.

I wrote:

“I’ve become really run down from stress now. I hope I’ve done everything I need to do from my end for the time being.”

Later:

“I’m sorry if you’ve tried to call me. I’ve been really sick.”

And then:

“Apologies for the delay. I’ve been sick this week.”

There is something deeply confronting about these emails.

Not one of these was written to a doctor. 

They were written to lawyers, banks, conveyancers and real estate professionals because they had become the people holding together what remained of my life.

The decline in my health was caused by employer, insurer, regulators and the office of my local MP for Kogarah. 

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“I have no one looking out for me.”

As another legal letter arrived, I simply replied:

“I’m very sick and I have no one looking out for me.”

This was a statement of fact.

The statutory workers compensation scheme had effectively disappeared from my life.

• The insurer wasn’t protecting me.
• The regulator wasn’t enforcing compliance.
• The employer wasn’t ensuring a safe return to work.
• There was no coordinated recovery.

No one was looking out for me.

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Paying to buy time

On 30 June 2022, after discussing the consequences with my solicitor, I agreed to every condition.

My solicitor carefully explained what those decisions meant.

The purchase price would increase to $595,000.

Default interest would continue to accrue.

The original deposit would be released immediately.

A further $58,000 would be transferred into the vendor’s solicitor’s trust account.

Additional legal costs would follow.

I replied:

“Please proceed with the confirmed agreement to the vendor’s solicitor and transferring the $58,000 to the account…”

The payment was processed that same day. 

That was the price I paid to buy more time.

Time that I never should have needed to buy.

All this was caused by an employer, insurer and regulators not complying with their own statutory obligations. 

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The snowball effect

After the immediate crisis had been stabilised, my thoughts shifted to something bigger.

I wrote to the real estate professionals who had supported me through the transaction:

“It’s like a snowball effect.” 

A snowball.

One failure triggered another.

One financial loss created the next.

One regulatory failure spread into housing.

Into banking.

Into property.

Into legal costs.

Into my financial future.

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This was never just a workers compensation claim

People often imagine that workers compensation is simply about weekly payments or medical treatment.

My documents tell a very different story.

By the end of June 2022, the failures of a statutory scheme had spread into every corner of my life.

They were influencing property settlements.

Mortgage arrangements.

Investment decisions.

Legal negotiations.

Every delay carried another financial consequence.

Every failure to enforce compliance became another invoice that landed in my lap instead.

These weren’t unfortunate life events unfolding alongside a workers compensation claim.

They were the foreseeable consequences of regulators failing to regulate, an insurer failing to comply with its statutory obligations, and an employer continuing to ignore the safeguards that should have existed from the beginning.

By the end of June 2022, I wasn’t simply fighting to recover from a workplace injury.

I was paying tens of thousands of dollars just to buy time.

And every dollar I paid became part of the true cost of regulatory failure.

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 415-423.

The Parallel Crisis: While I Waited for Regulators, I Was Fighting to Save My Home - June 2022

26–28 June 2022

By late June 2022, my life had become two crises unfolding simultaneously.

One was visible in the endless letters to regulators, pleading for someone to enforce the legal obligations that should have protected an injured worker years earlier.

The other was happening quietly, behind the scenes, as I fought to stop my financial life from collapsing.

The two were never separate.

One caused the other.

Because the workers compensation system had failed to provide income support, failed to enforce return-to-work obligations and failed to intervene when compliance repeatedly broke down, the financial consequences spread far beyond my workplace.

They reached my home.

My investments.

My future.

These emails from 26–28 June 2022 capture that reality in real time.

They’re not property documents.

They’re evidence of what regulatory failure looks like when it spills into every corner of someone’s life.

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Every day became crisis management

By this point, I had become the coordinator of my own survival.

While psychologically injured, I was simultaneously trying to coordinate:

• solicitors;
• mortgage consultants;
• real estate agents;
• settlement documentation;
• trust account transfers;
• mortgage security arrangements;
• and increasingly urgent financial deadlines.

The irony wasn’t lost on me.

The workers compensation system had case managers.

Yet I had effectively become my own.

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A home that had to be saved at any cost

Only days earlier I had explored every possible option to keep my home.

I had even considered bringing my brother into the purchase to prevent losing it altogether.

But circumstances changed.

Instead, I accepted a significantly reduced offer on my Melbourne investment property because speed mattered more than value.

I explained to my solicitor:

“It’s a very low offer but a quick settlement.”

Those words weren’t about property strategy.

They were about survival.

This wasn’t an investor trying to maximise profit.

It was someone forced into sacrificing an asset simply to keep everything else from collapsing.

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Trying to hold everything together

As the paperwork intensified, so did the emotional exhaustion.

I sent document after document to my mortgage consultant, trying desperately not to overlook anything.

At one point I wrote:

“My health is really bad at the moment, so if there’s anything I’ve missed or need to do, just keep reminding me as we proceed to the end of this process.”

I was asking someone to help me remember what still needed doing because the cumulative trauma had left me exhausted.

For years I had been expected to carry burdens that should never have been mine alone.

Now I was terrified that one missed signature or one forgotten form could cost me my home as well.

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Someone actually responded

One detail stands out when I reread these emails.

My mortgage consultant responded almost immediately.

He replied:

“Thank you for this Vicki! I will get this sorted right away…”

It seems like such a small thing.

But after years of writing to regulators who delayed, redirected responsibility or simply failed to act, a straightforward response felt almost unfamiliar.

Here was someone acknowledging the information, taking ownership and moving the matter forward.

That was exactly what I had been pleading for from the statutory bodies responsible for enforcing compliance in my workers compensation claim.

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“I’ve become really run down from stress”

After obtaining confirmation that my solicitor had received the $210,000 trust account transfer required for the security swap, I immediately forwarded it to the bank.

But even this simple administrative step carried another glimpse into what was happening behind the scenes.

I wrote:

“I’ve become really run down from stress now. I hope I’ve done everything I need to do from my end for the time being.”

Then, despite everything, I still found myself encouraging others.

I ended the email by writing:

“We all need to keep faith, hope and love alive.”

I was trying to keep hope alive for everyone else while quietly wondering how much longer I could keep going myself.

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Every delay came with another financial cost

The financial pressure didn’t stop once the documents had been signed.

Settlement delays created new problems.

On 28 June 2022, I was trying to find ways to avoid further financial penalties.

I explained:

“Given personal circumstances, I hope I can avoid more cost financially if possible.”

To secure yet another settlement extension, it was suggested offering the Sydney vendor $10,000 compensation because the vendor had wanted settlement before the end of the financial year.

Without hesitation, I replied:

“Please … proceed as per suggestion in the email. I accept for such a suggestion to be put forward to the vendor.”

I wasn’t negotiating from strength. I was paying more simply to buy time.

Time that should never have been so expensive.

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I genuinely believed things were about to improve

Earlier in the process, I had written to my solicitor:

“I’d rather my brother gain from a business transaction than I lose my secure home just as everything is about to turn around for me. Compliance is finally about to be enforced in another important area of my life.”

Reading those words now is heartbreaking.

I truly believed accountability was finally approaching.

I believed someone would eventually enforce the law.

I believed the financial damage would stop.

Instead, it accelerated.

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This wasn’t a property story

It’s about regulatory failure made visible.

It shows what happens when statutory protections exist on paper but disappear in practice.

While regulators failed to enforce compliance, I was forced to liquidate investments, accept reduced offers, restructure loans, coordinate multiple professionals, negotiate settlement extensions and absorb escalating costs simply to keep a roof over my head.

This wasn’t a separate crisis running alongside my workers compensation claim.

It was the workers compensation claim.

The financial consequences had spread beyond the workplace and into every part of my life.

That is why I call this The Parallel Crisis.

Because while the system stood still, my life didn’t.

It unravelled…

While the institutional wage theft continued…

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 411-414

The Sound of Silence - June 2022

22 & 29 June 2022

There comes a point when asking for help becomes harder than carrying the suffering alone.

By 22 June 2022, I’d reached that point.

I wasn’t writing to strangers.

I wasn’t writing to people who didn’t know me.

I was writing to colleagues in Ministry. People who spoke about dignity, compassion, justice and community. People who knew me. People who had worked alongside me. People who knew I had dedicated more than twenty years of my life to our university community.

And yet, despite everything that had happened, I still found myself pleading to be heard.

In an email on 22 June 2022, I wrote:

“I’ve got no support and I’m very, very sick and alone… I need human support like every human person.”

Those words weren’t written to make anyone feel guilty.

They were written because they were true.

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My life had become a series of parallel crises.

My workers’ compensation claim remained unresolved.

My publicly funded university employer, who’d injured me in their decision to take aggressive adverse action for my requesting a psychosocially safe work environment, had still not made me feel safe.

The systems that were supposed to protect workers had failed to intervene.

My family’s privacy had also been violated by the University’s leaders.

That was my family’s privacy. It wasn’t something I ever expected to become intertwined with my workplace.

What distressed me most was that deeply private and tragic family circumstances hadn’t been treated with the dignity and confidentiality every person deserves.

Privacy is not a privilege.

It is part of respecting the dignity of every human person.

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Throughout those weeks, I kept returning to one word.

Integrity.

Not legal strategy.

Not public relations.

Integrity.

In that same email of 22 June 2022, I wrote:

“I need integrity not hypocrisy.”

Those words came from profound disappointment.

Because mission statements are easy to publish.

The Gospel is easy to quote.

Strategic plans are easy to write.

But integrity is revealed when someone within your own community is suffering.

It is revealed by whether people step towards that person…

…or quietly step away.

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A week later, on 29 June 2022, I found myself writing to my solicitor, not about legal tactics, but about survival.

I wrote:

“This is the outcome when no one listens.”

Those words weren’t directed at one person.

They reflected years of trying to be heard.

By my employer.

By my insurer.

By regulators.

And, perhaps most painfully, by members of a university community whose mission spoke so often about compassion, justice and the dignity of the human person.

Revisit my reflection on the Staff Code of Conduct for ALL staff: http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/10/its-what-you-do-that-defines-who-we-are.html

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One sentence from that email says it all:

“I’m not here to save the world. Right now, I’d be happy to just save myself.”

That was EXHAUSTION.

For years, I found myself battling a failed regulatory system to save:

My career.

My health.

My home.

My future.

By the end of June 2022, I was simply trying to survive.

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I don’t remember those weeks only because of the legal battles or the endless correspondence.

I remember them because I was still hoping that someone would hear what lay beneath the words.

Just someone willing to stop long enough to see that one of their own colleagues was drowning.

Perhaps that is what saddens me most.

Not that I kept asking for help.

But that I kept believing someone would answer.

And all I could hear…

…was the sound of silence.

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 367-368.

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Further Reading

In The Pain of Unbelonging: Why Workplace Bullying Hurts, psychologist Dorothy Suskind explores how workplace bullying damages our fundamental human need to belong. She explains that organisational silence, exclusion and institutional betrayal can leave people feeling isolated, unseen and disconnected from the very communities where they felt they belonged.

Much of that resonated with me.

The isolation has been one of the hardest parts of this journey.

But where my story differs is in what comes next.

I have never accepted that this should be the end of my relationship with the university community I served for more than twenty years.

The silence I experienced wasn’t simply colleagues drifting away. It was a culture where fear prevented people from reaching out, even when they wanted to. Workplace bullying doesn’t affect only its target. It changes the behaviour of everyone around it.

I won’t allow the abuse of power, failures of governance and breaches of statutory obligations to determine the ending of my story.

There must be accountability and natural justice. As Senator Tony Sheldon said, “public money comes with public accountability.” (See https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-19/senate-inquiry-interim-report-university-governance/105795694). 

As for “closure”, closure does not come from quietly accepting what should never have happened.

For me, this story ends when those with responsibility finally do what they should have done from the beginning: protect the dignity, safety and rights of the people entrusted to their care.

Suskind, D. (2025, 5 July). ‘The Pain of Unbelonging: Why Workplace Bullying Hurts.’ Psychology Today. [Online]: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/bully-wise/202507/the-pain-of-unbelonging-why-workplace-bullying-hurts/amp