6 April 2022
“Another Week of Fear and Torture”
By April 2022, I was no longer simply asking for help.
I was documenting survival.
Every email I sent carried the same underlying reality: I was trapped inside a system that had already failed me repeatedly, while the people with the authority to intervene continued to delay, defer, or disappear behind process.
And still, I kept writing.
Still, I kept explaining.
Still, I kept trying to make someone understand how serious it had become.
On 6 April 2022, Cheryl Han, from the Kogarah electorate office, contacted me to say that a scheduled phone meeting with the university had been cancelled and would likely take place the following week instead.
Email from Cheryl Han, Office of Chris Minns MP, 6 April 2022
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The meeting between the Kogarah electorate office and the University was postponed, extending yet another week of uncertainty while I remained without resolution, income security, or implementation of the agreed Injury Management Plan. |
Another delay.
Another week.
Another extension of uncertainty while my life, health, employment, and financial security remained suspended.
My response that day came from a place of exhaustion, fear, and desperation after nearly two years of fighting simply to have basic statutory obligations acknowledged.
I wrote:
“It’s another week of fear and torture but I hope the uni are finally learning how serious and unlawful this is.”
It was the reality of living through prolonged institutional harm while trying to survive a workers compensation system that, in practice, seemed incapable of protecting the worker it was designed for.
I was describing what had happened to me: intimidation, retaliation, psychological harm, and the destruction of safety protections that should have existed from the beginning.
I referenced the conduct of the University’s National Manager of Employment Relations and Safety, Rena Christmann, and the impact her actions had had on both me and my family.
And underneath all of it is a deeper harm that became impossible for me to ignore.
This is not just any employer.
This is a Catholic university, an institution that publicly speaks about dignity, ethics, mission, and human values.
So I wrote about that too, because what I had experienced stood in complete contradiction to the values the institution claimed to uphold.
I wrote:
“Listening promotes dignity. No one listened and protected me and my entitlements...”
One of the most damaging parts of prolonged workplace harm is not only the original conduct itself — it is the repeated experience of not being heard afterwards.
Not being protected.
Not being believed.
Not being treated as fully human while trying to explain your own suffering.
At the same time, I was also trying to keep another insurer informed — not because it was their responsibility to carry what the statutory workers compensation system was legally required to provide, but because I was running out of options.
On 12 April 2022, TAL contacted me asking whether there had been any update following the meeting involving my local MP and the university.
By then, even my income protection insurer was aware that my elected representative, Chris Minns, had become involved in what should have been a straightforward statutory workplace injury matter.
That should never have been necessary.
TAL was not responsible for enforcing workers compensation law in New South Wales.
TAL was not the regulator.
TAL was not responsible for ensuring that an employer complied with an Injury Management Plan.
And TAL was not responsible for enforcing return-to-work obligations under the statutory scheme.
That responsibility belonged to SIRA NSW and the broader regulatory system that was meant to protect injured workers.
But instead of enforcement, what I experienced was repeated shutdowns, dismissals, delays, and procedural deflection while my situation deteriorated financially and psychologically.
The regulator that was supposed to ensure compliance instead became another source of distress.
That is why I had gone to my elected representative. Because the statutory system itself had failed to function.
In my reply to TAL, I explained that the meeting had again been postponed and that the ongoing delays had become unbearable.
I wrote:
“The last thing I’ve had a chance to do is look after my health and well-being in all of this. For me, it was another week of prolonged torture.”
That captures the reality of what prolonged regulatory failure can do to a human being.
When a worker is left without enforcement of basic statutory protections, without income security, without safe return-to-work implementation, without effective intervention from regulators, the harm compounds.
The psychological injury does not remain static.
It escalates.
The financial pressure escalates.
The fear escalates.
And the isolation escalates.
I also wrote about the Injury Management Plan that had already been agreed to, and the fact that the recommendations supporting a safe return to work had never been properly implemented despite medical support and consultation processes already existing.
I’m still trying to return safely to my HEW8 library role at the Strathfield campus.
That is important.
Because despite everything that had happened, despite the trauma, despite the fear, despite the escalating distress, I’m still trying to recover and return to work.
I’m not trying to destroy the institution.
I’m trying to survive it.
And yet the system continued to behave as though enforcing basic obligations was optional.
One line in that email captures just how psychologically overwhelmed I had become:
“I need to find outlets to remain sane. But I’m frightened.”
Looking back now, I can see how much pressure I was under by then.
Not only financially.
Not only professionally.
But psychologically.
I was living inside prolonged uncertainty, prolonged non-compliance, prolonged isolation, and repeated institutional silence while trying to fight systems far larger and more powerful than myself.
And still, even in that state, I thanked the electorate office for defending my employee rights.
Because at that point, I still wanted to believe someone might intervene.
I still wanted to believe somebody in authority might finally listen before the damage became irreversible.
But by now, I had my doubts.
This email was yet another notice.
Another warning.
Another documented moment where people in positions of political, institutional, and regulatory responsibility were being told clearly that serious harm was occurring.
And the notices just kept coming.
But the institutionalised wage theft continued…
NB: I never got an update after my elected representative’s meeting with the VC. I got silence. I found out when that meeting took place with everyone else - on Chris Minns’ social media account.
Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 301 and 304
