The Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Ethics — A Follow-Up That Should Not Be Necessary - February 2022

In early 2022, I also wrote to the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Ethics.

I had not only sent private communication to the DVC of Ethics via LinkedIn, in February 2022, I wrote a letter sent to him via express post. 

I wrote because the situation had already escalated to a point where internal processes had failed, and the harm I was experiencing was not only ongoing — it was intensifying.

That letter was grounded in lived experience, documented events, and a simple expectation: that someone in a position of ethical leadership would recognise what was happening and act.

I placed him on notice in the same way the Vice-Chancellor had been placed on notice in November 2021.

What I outlined was clear.

There had been a failure to implement an agreed injury management plan. There had been no meaningful support for recovery. There had been no safe pathway back to work. Instead, there was escalation, silence, and conduct that stripped away dignity in ways that are difficult to adequately put into words.  

I asked him a question.

For me, it was the only question that mattered at that point:

What is the truth?

And alongside it:

What defines courage?

Those questions remain unanswered.

What is the truth?

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What has become clearer over time is that this was never just about process failure.

It was about contradiction.

A profound and deeply confronting contradiction between what is publicly promoted — ethics, dignity, mission, values — and what is privately permitted when those principles are tested.

Because ethics, if they are to mean anything at all, must exist in moments of discomfort. They must exist when action is required. They must exist when silence becomes easier than intervention.

What I experienced was not the presence of ethics.

It was the absence of them where they were most needed.

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I described in that earlier letter the psychological harm, the destabilisation, and the sense of being isolated within a system I had served for over twenty years. I spoke about the impact not only on me, but on my family — the humiliation, the erosion of dignity, the sense that something deeply unjust was being allowed to continue unchecked.  

When harm is sustained and ignored, it does not remain contained. It expands. It embeds. It changes how you see the world around you.

And when that harm occurs within an institution that speaks so confidently about its values, the impact is even more severe.

It forces a question you cannot avoid:

Are those values real?

Or are they only real when they are easy to uphold?

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The role of Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Ethics is not symbolic. It carries an expectation that when ethical failures occur, they will be recognised, confronted, and addressed.

Not deferred.

Not ignored.

Not distanced.

And yet, in my case, that is exactly what happened.

There was no meaningful intervention.

No visible attempt to reconcile the contradiction between conduct and values.

No action that demonstrated that ethics, as a function of leadership, had any operational meaning when tested against reality.

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I am not writing this as someone who has walked away.

I am still here.

I have not withdrawn my position.

I have not abandoned the expectation that what occurred should be acknowledged and addressed.

What I asked for then is exactly what I ask for now:

• Compliance with legal obligations
• Implementation of the injury management plan
• A safe and supported return to work
• And the restoration of dignity through action

These are baseline requirements.

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Legal Accountability — When Ethics Fail, the Law Still Applies

What occurred is not only an ethical failure. It raises serious questions of legal compliance, governance oversight, and institutional accountability.

Work Health and Safety (WHS) Duties

Under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW), an employer has a primary duty of care to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers — including psychological health.

This includes obligations to:

• Provide a safe system of work
• Eliminate or minimise risks to psychological health
• Respond appropriately when risks are identified
• Prevent further harm once an injury is known

What I experienced demonstrates a failure to:

• Adequately respond to known psychological risk
• Prevent escalation of harm once it was clearly identified
• Provide a safe and supported pathway back to work
• Implement agreed measures designed to stabilise recovery

These are statutory obligations.

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Workers Compensation & Injury Management Obligations

Once an injury is identified and an Injury Management Plan is agreed, there are clear obligations to:

• Actively implement that plan
• Maintain appropriate case management
• Support recovery and return to work in a structured, lawful way

In my case:

• The Injury Management Plan was not meaningfully implemented
• Support mechanisms broke down
• The pathway to recovery was not facilitated

This represents a failure of injury management compliance, not simply a breakdown in communication.

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Governance Failure — When Leadership Is on Notice

What elevates this matter further is that senior leadership was formally put on notice.

This includes:

• The Vice-Chancellor (November 2021)
• The Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Ethics (early 2022)

Once leadership is on notice of:

• Potential WHS risks
• Ongoing harm
• Possible non-compliance with statutory obligations

There is a governance obligation to act.

Failure to act raises serious questions about:

• Due diligence by officers of the organisation
• Whether reasonable steps were taken to prevent ongoing harm
• Whether institutional processes are capable of responding to risk

Silence, in this context, is not neutral.

It may constitute a failure of governance oversight.

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Ethics vs Conduct — The Core Contradiction

This is where the issue becomes unavoidable.

An institution cannot:

• Publicly promote dignity, ethics, and mission
• While privately allowing conduct that undermines those principles
• And failing to act when that contradiction is brought directly to its leadership

At that point, it is no longer a matter of values.

It is a matter of accountability.

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The Question Remains

So I return to the question that was put forward in early 2022.

A question directed to the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Ethics, but one that now sits more broadly with the institution itself:

What is the truth?

And if that truth is known—

what defines the courage to act on it?

Because ethics cannot remain a public narrative if they are absent in private reality.

And leadership cannot claim integrity if it does not respond when that integrity is placed directly in front of it.

Ethics without action are just words.

And the institutionalised wage theft also continued…

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 265.

The Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Ethics Who Blocked an Employee in Crisis - February 2022

Public ethics. Private abandonment. 

 

At the same time as public messages about wellbeing, ethical leadership, and responsibility were being shared under the authority of a Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Ethics, I was privately sending him evidence of harm, describing fear, and asking for help. Those two realities existed side by side — the public voice of values, and the private experience of being ignored, shut out, and ultimately blocked when I was in crisis.

By February 2022, I was trying to survive what was happening to me.

I had already raised concerns through internal channels. I had reported what I believed were serious breaches of work health and safety obligations. I had tried to follow process, to be reasonable, to trust that an institution I had served for over twenty years would respond when one of its own said, clearly, that something was wrong.

Instead, everything escalated.

The pressure. The silence. The refusal to act.

By that point, my income had been disrupted, my health was deteriorating, and I was facing the very real possibility of losing my home. I was frightened in a way that is difficult to explain unless you have lived through it. This was not just stress, but the kind of fear that sits in your body because every system that is supposed to protect you is failing at once.

That is when I reached out directly to the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Ethics.

My job in the Library Directorate also comes under his portfolio, leadership and responsibility. 

I wrote to him because he held a role that, by definition, carried responsibility for ethical leadership. The Library Directorate sat under his portfolio. My job sat under his portfolio. And what I was experiencing was not just poor management or workplace conflict — it was a collapse of integrity at multiple levels.

I sent him a private message on LinkedIn. I attached evidence. I explained what had been happening to me.

I told him I was frightened.

I told him I could lose my home.

I told him I was dealing with ongoing harassment, intimidation and what I described, at the time, as mobbing.

“Please stop the stalking, blocking, mobbing, harassing & intimidating… even toward my grief-stricken family.”  

I described the cumulative harm.

“I finally burnt out from severe privacy violation, negligence, harassment, discrimination… and psychological violence that’s still happening.”  

I made it clear that this was not abstract. This was not theoretical.

“Psychosocial hazards do kill.”  

And I asked him, directly, to act.

“What is your choice in action as an ethics professor and DVC?”  

That question came from a place of belief. At that point, despite everything, I still believed that someone in a position of authority — someone responsible for ethics — would step in when faced with evidence of harm.

What happened next is something I will never forget.

He viewed my LinkedIn profile. 

And then I was blocked.

The DVC of ETHICS blocked a victim of workplace mobbing!

At the exact moment I was most distressed, most vulnerable, and most in need of intervention, a senior executive — a Professor of Ethics — chose not just silence, but exclusion.

To me, it communicated:

No acknowledgement or validation.

No attempt to understand.

No indication that the information I had provided had even been considered.

That decision came after months of escalation where:

• I had raised psychosocial hazards that were not managed
• I had sought support that was not provided
• I had experienced conduct that I believed breached both ethical standards and legal obligations
• and I had continued, despite all of that, to try to engage constructively

Blocking me was not just a personal slight. It was not just unkind.

It was a failure of responsibility at the highest level.

When a worker presents evidence of harm, articulates fear, and identifies risk to their health and safety, the response is not optional. It is not a matter of preference. 

It is a matter of duty.

And that duty was not met.

What compounded the harm was the contrast.

While I was being shut out, excluded, and left to deal with escalating fear on my own, the same senior executive continued to present publicly as a leader in ethics — speaking about wellbeing, values, and responsibility.

But I had seen what happened behind that language.

I had experienced what those words meant in practice when someone actually needed them to translate into action.

They didn’t.

That is where something shifted in me.

Up until that point, I had been trying to hold onto the idea that systems fail, but people within them can still choose to do the right thing.

That belief began to break.

This was not a junior staff member who didn’t understand the implications of inaction.

This was a senior executive.

A professor.

Someone whose role was to understand, teach, and embody ethics.

And in the moment where ethics required action — not theory, not language, not positioning — but action, the choice was to turn away.

The harm from that decision intensified everything I was already experiencing.

It deepened the sense of isolation.

It reinforced the message that there was no safe pathway left within the institution.

It escalated the psychological impact of what I was already enduring.

And it contributed to a level of fear that no worker should ever be placed in for simply exercising a lawful right — the right to a safe work environment.

Integrity was not just compromised. It was absent.

Because integrity is not what is said in public.

Integrity is what is done when someone is at risk and you have the power to intervene.

This is also where the legal dimension cannot be ignored.

What I reported was not just “concerns.”

It involved:

• psychosocial hazards recognised under WHS law
• alleged breaches of duty of care
• ongoing harm with foreseeable consequences
• and a worker actively seeking protection and intervention

In that context, doing nothing is not neutral.

Shutting down communication is not neutral.

Blocking access is not neutral.

Those are decisions.

And decisions at that level carry consequences.

What makes this even more difficult to reconcile is that I did not go outside the system first. I did not bypass process.

I followed it.

I escalated internally.

I reached leadership.

I gave the institution every opportunity to act.

And when I reached the point of contacting the person responsible for ethics, it was because I still believed that integrity, at some level, existed within that structure.

That belief did not survive that interaction.

What followed was not just ongoing harm — it was the realisation that the safeguards I thought existed were not going to be activated, even when the risk was clear, even when the evidence was provided, and even when the consequences were foreseeable.

That is what people need to understand about institutional harm at this level.

It is not just what is done to you.

It is what is not done when it could have been stopped and how quickly everything unravels when those with responsibility choose not to act.

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Legal Accountability — Integrity vs Obligation

This was not simply an ethical “failure”. It raises serious questions about compliance with:

• Work Health and Safety obligations to ensure psychological health and safety
• Duties to manage psychosocial hazards, including bullying, harassment and organisational risk factors
• Executive responsibilities to act on credible reports of harm and risk
• General protections under the Fair Work Act, where adverse treatment follows the exercise of a workplace right

The gap between what was required and what occurred is fundamental.

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Closing

I did not lose faith because of one moment.

I lost it through a series of decisions, silences, and failures — this being one of the clearest.

When someone entrusted with ethics chooses not to act in the face of harm, it forces a question that is far bigger than one workplace:

What do those words actually mean, if they disappear when they are needed most?

And the institutionalised wage theft continued…

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 253.