The Cost of Survival While They Withheld What I Was Owed - February / March 2022

By February and March 2022, my life had become a constant exercise in trying to hold together what remained of my stability while the people and systems legally responsible for supporting my recovery continued withholding the income and statutory entitlements I depended on.

At the same time I was reporting governance failures, psychological harm, and escalating safety concerns to my employer, regulators, and insurers, I was also trying to save my home.

That’s a significant issue, because workers’ compensation disputes are often discussed in sterile administrative language — claims management, liability decisions, procedural delays, capacity disputes.

What is rarely acknowledged is what those delays actually do to a human life.

Behind every withheld payment is a mortgage.

A property settlement.

A bank account being drained.

A person trying to stop their life collapsing while still attempting to comply with every process demanded of them.

That was my reality in early 2022.

While I was still without proper statutory income support, my Melbourne investment property had been placed on the market. Simultaneously, I was attempting to purchase the unit I was renting in Sydney in order to secure some form of stability for myself.  

That sentence alone says everything about how serious the situation had become.

People do not sell investment properties and restructure their lives this way because things are going well.

They do it because they are trying to survive.

 

The records from February 2022 show me coordinating urgent owners corporation certificates required for the sale of my Melbourne apartment. The documents outlined levy balances, strata records, insurance information, and sale-related compliance requirements connected to the property.  

There were emails between real estate agents, solicitors, and strata managers trying to progress the transaction urgently. 

At the same time, I was arranging the purchase of the unit I lived in.

The conveyancing records show contracts exchanged on 4 February 2022, with settlement due by 27 May 2022.  

The legal correspondence also records what should never have been necessary in the first place:

“We note that you have placed your Melbourne property on the market…”  

That was not a wealth-building strategy.

That was me liquidating stability to protect my primary residence while my employer and insurer continued refusing to comply with obligations that existed specifically to prevent workers from reaching this point.

The financial pressure was enormous.

The purchase required coordination between lawyers in Victoria and New South Wales. I was trying to organise refinancing documentation and authorities while continuing to navigate a workers compensation system that had already destabilised nearly every aspect of my life.  

And this is the part that needs to be understood clearly:

None of this occurred because I had acted irresponsibly.

I’ve worked for my university community for two decades.

I had stable employment.

A healthy superannuation history.

Property assets.

Financial plans.

Long-term security.

What destabilised my life was the prolonged withholding of legally owed entitlements and the refusal of institutions to comply with their statutory obligations after I reported harm and requested a safe work environment.

That distinction matters enormously because there is a broader public narrative around injured workers that quietly implies financial collapse somehow reflects personal failure.

But what happens when the collapse is system-induced?

What happens when the harm escalates because regulators fail to intervene, employers fail to cooperate, and insurers fail to properly discharge obligations that exist precisely to stop this kind of deterioration?

That is what these records document.

Not recklessness.

Not mismanagement.

Survival.

Every email about conveyancing.

Every strata certificate.

Every refinancing form.

Every settlement discussion.

All of it was happening while I was also fighting simply to be treated lawfully within a statutory workers compensation scheme.

And the cruel reality is this:

Had the employer, insurer, and regulators complied with their obligations when they should have, none of this likely would have been necessary.

The investment property would not have needed to be sold under pressure.

The financial destabilisation would not have escalated the way it did.

The ripple effects across my life would not have become so severe.

Instead, while senior executives remained protected within secure salaries and institutional power structures, I was the one trying to hold together housing security, finances, legal processes, and my own wellbeing at the same time.

This is what prolonged institutional non-compliance actually looks like in a person’s life, beyond legal arguments and case files. 

The forced dismantling of stability, piece by piece, while the systems responsible for preventing that harm continue looking the other way.

And the institutionalised wage theft continued…

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 284-291

Respect. Now. Always. — Except When I Needed Help - February 2022

What happened by February 2022 was no longer simply a workers compensation dispute.

It had become a situation where I could not even reliably contact my own employer’s corporate services without barriers being placed in the way.

On 24 February 2022, after repeated failed attempts to obtain help, support, safety intervention, or even basic communication, I sent a message to the University’s “Respect. Now. Always.” crisis reporting service.  

The service appeared primarily designed for students.

But where else was I supposed to go?

I had already reported concerns through internal channels. I had repeatedly raised psychosocial safety risks. I had begged for assistance regarding ongoing bullying, harassment, intimidation, privacy violations, and what I believed to be unlawful blocking of my phone number from corporate services and key university contacts.

And still nothing meaningful changed.

By this stage, I was no longer simply distressed by the original workplace harm.

I was becoming traumatised by the response to it.

The silence.

The obstruction.

The refusal to engage.

The refusal to restore safe communication.

The refusal to implement basic injury management obligations.

The refusal to stop conduct that was actively escalating psychological harm.

In that message, I described what had been happening to me for years. I described the impact of HR executives and WHS staff who, instead of protecting safety, had become part of the machinery causing harm.  

I wrote about being isolated from my workplace community after two decades of service.

I wrote about being blocked from contacting people who held responsibility for governance, ethics, and safety.

I wrote about the psychological impact of being cut off from support while still trying — desperately — to cooperate with recovery processes and statutory obligations.

Most disturbingly, I raised concerns about telecommunications blocking being used in a way that intensified distress and isolation.  

That is extremely important to recognise because psychosocial harm does not occur only through overt aggression.

It also occurs through systemic isolation.

Through silence.

Through obstruction.

Through forcing a worker into a position where they can no longer access communication pathways, support structures, or even basic human reassurance that somebody is listening.

What people often fail to understand about prolonged psychological injury is that communication itself becomes critical to safety.

When somebody is already traumatised, removing avenues of contact does not calm the situation.

It escalates it.

And yet, despite repeatedly explaining my distress, despite repeatedly asking for lawful injury management processes, despite clearly articulating that I needed support and coordinated recovery, I continued to encounter barriers instead of assistance.

The message itself reflected exhaustion.

I explained that I had “begged and begged and begged” for contact and support consistent with workers compensation obligations, my Injury Management Plan, and recommendations from my nominated treating doctor and treating professionals that had never been properly implemented.  

That sentence still haunts me. It should never reach the point where a worker has to beg for obligations already required under law.

A psychologically safe workplace is not supposed to depend on how much suffering someone can endure before another human being finally responds.

And what becomes deeply confronting looking back now is this:

I was still trying to engage.

Still trying to cooperate.

Still trying to communicate.

Still trying to return safely to work.

Even after years of harm.

Even after escalating trauma.

Even after repeated failures by governance, HR, WHS, insurer systems, and regulators.

I was still asking for lawful process and basic humanity.

IT IS MY HUMAN AND EMPLOYEE RIGHT. GENERALLY PROTECTED WORKPLACE RIGHTS. 

One part of the exchange particularly stayed with me.

After the crisis service offered to call me, I immediately clarified:

“I’m NOT at risk of harming myself.”  

I clarified that because I understood how easily trauma, exhaustion, and distressed communication can be misinterpreted when somebody is under severe psychological strain.

That is another reality people do not speak about enough.

Cognitive overload.

Trauma fatigue.

The way prolonged stress affects concentration, wording, memory, and communication clarity.

The way one missing word can suddenly shift meaning entirely.

And instead of recognising those realities as indicators of injury and overload, organisations often use them against workers as evidence of instability rather than evidence of harm.

What I needed was intervention.

Protection.

Communication.

Coordination.

Lawful injury management.

A safe pathway back to work.

What I experienced instead was continued isolation.

At the same time, I was also trying to force senior leadership to confront the contradiction between the university’s public ethical identity and the reality of what was happening internally.

I wrote separately during this period:

“It’s important for Identity and Ministry to read the stories.”  

Because this was never simply about policy language or mission statements.

It was about whether leadership would actually act when a worker reported harm.

Whether ethics existed only in public messaging, or whether they existed when protecting somebody vulnerable became inconvenient.

I had already lost faith in many systems by this point, but I still had not stopped trying to reach people.

That is the part many organisations never acknowledge when these situations become public years later.

Workers do not usually “go public” first.

Most spend years trying desperately to resolve things internally.

Quietly.

Respectfully.

Lawfully.

Repeatedly.

Until the silence itself becomes another form of harm.

And the institutionalised wage theft continued…

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 267 and 269

—

Psychological Safety in Academia Is Still Being Ignored

What happened to me is not isolated.

Across universities globally, there is increasing recognition that psychological safety in academia is often spoken about publicly while being poorly protected institutionally.

An article published by The Varsity in 2023 observed that people who report misconduct or raise concerns within academic environments are frequently punished rather than protected. The article highlights how fear, silence, retaliation, and institutional power dynamics continue to undermine genuine psychological safety in universities.  

That reality deeply reflects my own experience.

Psychological safety is not simply about wellbeing language, public campaigns, or institutional branding. It is about whether people can safely speak up, report harm, ask for help, and participate in workplace processes without fear of punishment, exclusion, humiliation, obstruction, or retaliation.

By February 2022, I was no longer experiencing psychological safety.

I was experiencing the consequences of its absence.

Further reading:

Borthakur, D. (2023, 22 October). ‘Opinion: Psychological safety in academia is overlooked - The silent scourge of academic bullying and institutional betrayal.’ The Varsity. [Online]: https://thevarsity.ca/2023/10/22/opinion-psychological-safety-in-academia-is-overlooked/ 

When Speaking Up Changes Nothing — And Those Responsible Simply Move On - February 2022

This sits alongside my earlier posts on SafeWork NSW. Posts that dealt with silence.

This one deals with what happens after that silence — when nothing changes, and those responsible simply move on.

⸻

By this point, I had already done everything that is expected of a worker in distress.

I had reported.

I had documented.

I had escalated.

I had asked — repeatedly — for one simple thing:

enforce the law.

Enforce the injury management plan.

Ensure compliance with workers’ compensation obligations.

Stop the ongoing harm.

Nothing changed.

What became clear was not a lack of awareness — it was a lack of action.

A SafeWork NSW inspector had already signalled the reality to me: policies would be shown, boxes would be ticked, and no one wanted to “ruffle feathers.”  

That wasn’t a throwaway comment.

It was an admission of how the system actually operates.

⸻

The Illusion of Protection

We are told that workplace safety systems are “robust” (a word I have come to distrust as much as those who use it). That psychosocial hazards are taken seriously. That there are codes, frameworks, and safeguards in place.

On paper, that may be true.

In practice, I was left exposed.

My safety was not prioritised.

My health was not protected.

The risks I reported were not controlled.

Instead of intervention, there was silence.

Instead of protection, there was escalation.

This is not a “policy gap”.

It is a failure to enforce existing law.

⸻

The Questions That Still Stand

At this stage, the issue was no longer individual.

It was systemic.

• Why are psychosocial hazards treated as optional rather than enforceable risks?

• Why are workers required to repeatedly prove harm while organisations face no immediate consequence?

• Why are processes like IMEs used in ways that compound psychological injury rather than assess it?

• Why was my nominated treating doctor excluded from decisions affecting my care?

• Why did regulators fail to act when serious WHS concerns — including intimidation and harassment — were clearly raised?

These questions remain unanswered.

⸻

Leadership Accountability — Or the Absence of It

At the same time all of this was unfolding, another pattern became clear.

The now former HR Director — the most senior person responsible for employment relations, workplace safety, and compliance — did not face any visible or transparent accountability process.

Instead, she transitioned into another senior HR role.

There was no public explanation of what had occurred under her leadership.

No indication that the issues raised had been investigated in any meaningful way.

No reassurance that the same risks would not follow into the next institution.

For a role that carries direct responsibility for:

• WHS compliance
• psychosocial risk management
• workers’ compensation processes
• organisational culture and conduct

that absence of accountability is significant.

When leadership moves on without scrutiny, the underlying issues do not disappear.

They relocate.

 

⸻

A System That Protects Itself

When regulators fail to enforce, and institutions fail to act, responsibility shifts onto the person who raised the concern.

I became the one carrying the burden of proof.

The burden of escalation.

The burden of survival.

Meanwhile, those with statutory obligations continued without interruption.

That is not how a regulatory system is meant to function.

⸻

Legal and Governance Reality

Under the WHS Act, psychosocial hazards must be actively managed.

Under workers’ compensation law, injury management obligations must be implemented.

Under basic governance principles, leadership is accountable for failures within their remit.

What occurred here reflects the opposite:

• Reported hazards were not controlled
• Injury management obligations were not enforced
• Regulatory intervention did not occur
• Leadership accountability was not visible

That is a breakdown in enforcement and governance.

⸻

What This Means in Practice

When harm is reported and nothing happens, it sends a message.

When regulators are notified and do nothing, it reinforces it.

When those responsible move on without consequence, it confirms it.

The message becomes clear:

You can follow every process.

You can do everything “right.”

And still be left unprotected.

⸻

Why This Matters

This is about what happens when:

• reporting mechanisms do not trigger action
• enforcement bodies defer rather than intervene
• leadership transitions without accountability

That combination creates risk — not just for one worker, but for every worker who comes after.

⸻

Conclusion

Silence is not just inaction.

In systems like this, silence is what allows harm to continue — and accountability to quietly disappear.

I refuse to let accountability quietly disappear. 

And the institutionalised wage theft continued…

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 262-263