Sustainability Is Not a Slogan — It Is a Duty

In the Staff Code of Conduct, under Sustainability, the University states:

“Sustainability is: considering financial, environmental (natural and built), workforce and workplace impacts in all personal and organisational decision making for the long term benefit of the [University] community and organisation and environment more broadly.”  

It goes further. Staff commit to:

• Using resources efficiently and avoiding waste

• Exercising due diligence to minimise organisational risk

• Identifying and reporting workplace health and safety risks

• Considering the impact of decisions on others and the reputation of the University

• Maintaining proper records and information management

• Fostering productivity, equity, and a positive inclusive workplace culture  

These are not abstract ideals. They are operational commitments.

And sustainability, in this context, is not about recycling bins or solar panels.

It is about how institutions treat people.

Sustainability in a workplace is not only environmental or financial. It is about how institutions protect people when harm is reported. 

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What Sustainability Actually Means in Practice

Sustainability in a workplace is about long-term stewardship:

• Financial stewardship

• Workforce stewardship

• Cultural stewardship

• Legal and regulatory stewardship

• Human stewardship

It means making decisions that do not cause foreseeable harm — financially, psychologically, reputationally or legally.

It means understanding that the cost of short-term concealment, avoidance, or retaliation is always higher than the cost of early transparency and compliance.

It means recognising that injured workers are not disposable liabilities.

They are part of the workforce the institution is obligated to sustain.

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When Sustainability Fails

My experience tells a very different story.

Sustainability requires:

“exercising due diligence in identifying and minimising organisational risk”  

What happened instead?

• Psychosocial hazards were reported.

• Protective measures were requested.

• Risks were documented.

• The harm continued.

That is not minimising organisational risk.

That is compounding it.

Sustainability requires:

“identify and report all workplace health and safety risks… and take all reasonable care for the health and safety of myself and of other persons in my place of work.”  

Yet when I raised WHS concerns, I was left to navigate a system blind. Critical information was withheld by both employer and insurer. No proper protective measures were implemented against known stressors.

Sustainability requires proper records and information management — records that are secure, complete, up-to-date and capable of providing organisational accountability.  

Instead, I have spent years reconstructing my own paper trail because the system that should have ensured accountability did not.

Sustainability requires considering workforce impacts in organisational decision-making.

The workforce impact of what occurred in my case was:

• Prolonged psychological harm

• Financial devastation

• Loss of property opportunities

• Withdrawal of superannuation to survive

• Years of regulatory escalation

That is not sustainability.

That is erosion.

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When Resources Are Used to Silence Rather Than Sustain

The Code states that University funds must be expended with proper consideration and care to avoid waste.  

So a serious question arises:

How many resources were authorised — not to protect a worker — but to defend against one?

What amount of institutional funding was allocated to external legal firms such as Clayton Utz to draft letters of intimidation and attempted silence?

What cost was attributed to engaging senior HR personnel, including the appointment of a national manager of employment relations and safety, not to de-escalate risk — but to isolate, discredit and construct a narrative against a longstanding employee who had reported WHS hazards?

Sustainability is not demonstrated by the capacity to marshal power.

It is demonstrated by how that power is used.

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Isolation, Mobbing and Organisational Harm

Sustainability requires fostering:

“a positive inclusive workplace culture.”  

What happens when the opposite occurs?

• Forced isolation

• Workplace mobbing

• Ostracism

• Blocking access to colleagues and Health and Safety Representatives

• Meetings where minutes are not taken

• Decisions that are undocumented

• Family privacy repeatedly referenced or exploited

• Personal trauma used to undermine credibility

When an injured worker is pleading — literally pleading — for help, safety and protection, and is instead met with isolation, what does that say about workforce sustainability?

When no minutes are taken at key meetings, what does that say about records and information management obligations?

When executive leaders fail to intervene with due diligence at governance level, what does that say about organisational risk management?

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Governance and Due Diligence

Sustainability requires:

“exercising due diligence in identifying and minimising organisational risk.”  

Due diligence is not passive.

It requires active inquiry.

It requires asking:

• Are we responding proportionately?

• Are we protecting the vulnerable?

• Are we escalating risk by our inaction?

• Are we documenting decisions transparently?

If senior leaders authorise — or fail to prevent — strategies that isolate and psychologically harm a worker who reported hazards, then sustainability is not being practiced at governance level.

It is being contradicted.

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What Choice Does a Targeted Worker Have?

What happens when:

• Protective measures in an injury management plan are not implemented?

• Statutory entitlements are withheld or delayed?

• Privacy is breached?

• Character is attacked?

• Family dignity is compromised?

• Internal mechanisms fail?

What choice does a severely targeted, frightened staff member have but to raise her voice publicly?

Not to damage an institution —

but to survive it.

To protect:

• Her life

• Her financial stability

• Her career

• Her integrity

• Her statutory entitlements

• Her family’s dignity

Sustainability includes human survival.

And when internal systems collapse, external voice becomes the only remaining safeguard.

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When Leaders Do the Opposite of the Code

The Code of Conduct applies to all staff.  

Not selectively.

Not conditionally.

Not only to the vulnerable.

If senior leaders act in ways that contradict:

• Respect

• Honesty

• Courage

• Sustainability

then the issue is no longer interpersonal.

It is structural.

Because culture is shaped from the top.

And when the example set at senior level conflicts with the Code’s commitments, the long-term impact is not just on one worker.

It is on:

• Institutional credibility

• Workforce trust

• Regulatory exposure

• Financial liability

• Moral authority

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Sustainability Is Tested in Crisis

Sustainability is easy when there is no conflict.

It is tested when:

• A worker reports hazards.

• An injury occurs.

• A complaint exposes risk.

• Governance decisions require courage.

My story is not merely a personal account.

It is a sustainability audit.

Because sustainability is not what is printed.

It is what happens when a vulnerable worker stands up and says:

“I am not safe.”

If the response is protection, transparency and due diligence — sustainability lives.

If the response is isolation, intimidation and reputational defence — sustainability fails.

And the long-term cost — human, financial, legal and moral — continues to accrue.

Sustainability is not a branding statement.

It is a duty.

And duties are measured by conduct — especially when power is involved.

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When Principles Are Ignored

Codes of conduct are not written for the easy moments.

They are written for the difficult ones — when power must be exercised responsibly, when a vulnerable worker asks for protection, when leaders must choose integrity over reputation management.

A Code only has meaning if it applies to everyone.

If sustainability requires consideration of workforce impact, due diligence, transparency, and the protection of health and safety — then those principles must apply most strongly to those entrusted with leadership.

Because when the principles in a Code of Conduct are ignored by those with the greatest authority, the consequences extend far beyond one worker.

They shape culture.

They shape trust.

And they shape the long-term integrity of the institution itself.

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See Also: Other Parts of the University Staff Code of Conduct

This post forms part of a broader reflection on the principles outlined in the University Staff Code of Conduct and how those principles operate in practice when a worker raises serious concerns about safety, integrity and accountability.

You may also wish to read:

Respect — On Paper and In Practice

https://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/01/respect-on-paper-and-in-practice.html?m=1

Honesty Is Tested When It Matters Most

https://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/01/honesty-is-tested-when-it-matters-most.html?m=1

I Asked for Boundaries. The Code Calls That Courage.

https://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/02/i-asked-for-boundaries-code-calls-that.html?m=1

Together, these posts explore a simple question:

What happens when the principles in a Code of Conduct are tested in real life — and those with the most power choose not to follow them?

I Wasn’t Allowed to Grieve - August 2021

“And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

1 Corinthians 13:13

In my previous post, “Dignity Requires Response: Psychosocial risk, institutional silence, and the emails that were never answered,” I wrote about the period in 2021 when I was sending email after email to a pastoral colleague asking simply for a human response.

Those emails did not appear out of nowhere.

They came from somewhere deeper.

They came from years of accumulated silence, stigma, and grief that had never been allowed to breathe.

To understand why those emails mattered so much, you have to understand what came before.

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There are moments in a person’s life that divide everything into before and after.

For me, that moment was 2 February 2010.

Three days after I returned from Spain — from flamenco classes in Granada and Seville, from laughter and holiday festivals — my father took his own life.

Nothing prepares you for that report.

Nothing prepares you for the silence of an ambulance without a siren.

Nothing prepares you for the sentence:

“He has passed away.”

And nothing prepares you for what comes next.

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The Night of Swords

Within an hour of my father’s death being confirmed, our home filled with people.

Not all of them came with compassion.

A priest relative arrived and, instead of offering comfort, delivered accusation. In Greek — so the police officers standing there thought he was ministering — he told us we had “locked my father up,” that we should “rejoice in what we had done.”

We had just lost our dad, my mum, her husband of 40 years.

We were in shock.

But somehow, even then, we were expected to defend ourselves.

The funeral arrangements were interfered with.

Decisions were made without our consent.

Gossip spread before we had even buried him.

And the stigma began.

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“Forget Your Grief”

Three months later, a priest visited.

I thought he had come to offer condolences.

Instead, he told us to forget about my father.

To forget about our grief.

That our pain was “nothing compared to others.”

There is something deeply violent about telling a grieving family that their suffering is insignificant.

Listening costs nothing.

Compassion costs nothing.

Silence, sometimes, is holy.

But what I encountered was neither compassion nor silence.

It was dismissal.

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The Facebook Post That Broke the Silence

Seven years later, in 2017, I finally broke my silence.

I shared a post challenging the stigma around suicide — challenging the language that frames it as a “crime,” the belief that those who die this way are simply exercising “free will,” and the notion that prayer and compassion somehow stop at death.

The response?

Defensiveness.

Accusations that I was “turning people away from the Church.”

Suggestions that I was angry at Christ.

I wasn’t angry at Christ.

I was angry at cruelty masquerading as piety.

At apathy disguised as doctrine.

At people who could debate theology but would not sit with a grieving daughter.

One priest eventually responded with compassion. His words were simple, humane, grounded. They reminded me that faith, when lived authentically, looks like love.

But the damage of stigma and insensitivity had already carved deep wounds.

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Heritage, Identity, and Loss

I come from a long line of strong, resilient people.

My ancestors in the Peloponnese fought for freedom in the Greek War of Independence. They preserved language, faith, culture through occupation and war. My grandparents carried dignity through poverty. My parents sacrificed everything to build a life in Australia.

My father was a kind and gentle soul.

Depression is not a moral failure.

It is not a sin.

It is not a lack of faith.

It is suffering.

And suffering requires compassion — not judgement.

Years later, on All Souls Day, I was denied Holy Communion by the campus chaplain. For a baptised and sacramentally aligned Orthodox Christian — someone seeking simply to take up her cross and follow Christ — compassionate pastoral discretion would have been possible.

Instead, I remained seated alone in the pew while others approached the altar.

In that moment, I felt what I had felt since my father’s death:

Like an outcast.

But here is what I know now:

Christ was rejected too.

And rejection by people does not equal rejection by God.

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The Workplace Aftermath

Grief did not unfold gently.

The morning after my father died, my manager arrived at our home and interrogated my mother about when I could return to work.

“It’s a busy time,” she said. Semester was starting.

I was not allowed to simply grieve.

Over time, unmanaged trauma compounded. Workplace bullying, ostracism, psychosocial hazards — all words I would later learn in the language of work health and safety — were layered over grief.

When you lose a parent to suicide and later face silence, isolation, and intimidation at work, your nervous system does not get a break.

It lives in survival mode.

Years later, when I was writing those emails described in “Dignity Requires Response,” I was not just reacting to a university’s WHS violations.

I was carrying grief that had never been allowed to heal.

Because when I needed a support network, I was abandoned instead. 

I now understand what trauma does to the body.

The blood pressure spikes.

The shaking.

The exhaustion.

The hypervigilance.

This is not weakness.

It is physiology.

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The Cost of Silence

What hurt most was the abandonment.

Colleagues who once said “everyone needs you” fell silent (or were coerced) when I needed support.

Institutions that speak of dignity and mission deferred to a misaligned and unethical “process.”

Regulators passed responsibility elsewhere.

Priests debated doctrine while families like mine carried unbearable weight.

Ostracism is a form of bullying.

Silence can be violence.

And yet, I kept speaking, because silence nearly killed me once already.

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What I Believe Now

I believe:

• Listening is an act of dignity.
• Depression is not a moral failure.
• Institutions must live the values they publish.
• Post-vention support after suicide is not optional — it is essential.
• Compassion is not theological weakness; it is strength.

I have met extraordinary people — friends who stayed, who listened, who stood beside me quietly. I have met police officers who remembered my story years later. I have encountered priests who embodied humility and love.

They are proof that goodness exists.

But goodness requires courage.

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If You Are Reading This

If you have lost someone to suicide:

You are not alone in how you feel.

Your grief is not a competition.

Your loved one’s life mattered.

And no one has the authority to weaponise doctrine against your pain.

If you are part of a church, a workplace, an institution:

Ask yourself whether your response to suffering is defensive or compassionate.

When someone says, “I am hurting,” do you correct them — or do you listen?

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My story is not about tearing down faith.

It is about calling it back to its heart.

Faith, hope, and love.

And the greatest of these is love.

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Update – Additional Context

After publishing this post, I was reminded of further details from those days that deserve to be recorded.

In the period surrounding our father’s death, a priest relative made remarks suggesting that our father had been “locked up in his own home” and that those closest to him could now “rejoice with what they had done.”

Those words were deeply distressing for our family.

What those comments failed to acknowledge was the long and painful history of interference, manipulation, and division that had surrounded our father for many years — circumstances that had already placed immense strain on him and on our immediate family long before the events of that week.

There was also another incident the morning after our father passed away.

A senior workplace figure — my manager — came to our family home.

Had the purpose of the visit been to offer condolences or support, it would have been received in that spirit. Our door was open in the aftermath of a devastating family tragedy.

Instead, questions were raised about when I would be returning to work, accompanied by comments that it was “a very busy time of year” and that staff could not be absent.

This occurred just hours after our father had died.

My mother had lost her husband. Our family was still in shock.

Rather than being given space to grieve, the conversation became focused on workplace availability and immediate expectations.

The exchange became increasingly distressing for those present and family members had to repeatedly insist that the visitor leave the house.

These moments remain difficult to recount, but they form part of the reality of what happened during that time.

Grief should be met with compassion, dignity, and understanding.

Instead, our family experienced intrusion and pressure at one of the most vulnerable moments of our lives.

Looking back now, that moment foreshadowed something I would come to understand much later — that even in the most human moments of grief, compassion can sometimes be displaced by institutional expectations.