Why Was I Still Waiting for CCI? - January 2023

January 2023: my doctor and I were still trying to get the workers’ compensation system to work as intended.

On 13 January 2023, I sent an update to TAL, the insurer providing income protection.

I supplied the doctor’s statement TAL had requested. I also explained where things stood with Catholic Church Insurance (CCI), my employer, Australian Catholic University (ACU), and the regulator I was still asking to secure basic cooperation.

TAL was helping me survive while I continued trying to make the workers’ compensation scheme do what it was supposed to do: support recovery, coordinate injury management and facilitate a safe return to work.

Without TAL’s income protection, I believe I would have been annihilated long before this point. People can interpret that word however they wish. I know what it means to have your financial security, health, independence and ability to keep asking for help worn down together.

From where I stood, this had become a process of human elimination. You could keep supplying documents, attending appointments and asking for cooperation—and still be left waiting for the protection the scheme was supposed to provide.

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12 December 2022: TAL asked for an update

On 12 December 2022, a TAL claims consultant emailed after speaking with me. Following my last medical update, TAL requested a further doctor’s statement to assist with managing and planning ahead on the income protection claim.

My nominated treating doctor completed TAL’s Progress Attending Doctor’s Statement on 10 January 2023.

The issue is what my doctor documented about the obstacles to recovery and return to work—and the cooperation we were still waiting for.

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10 January 2023: “workplace not facilitating this”

The TAL form asked whether there were complicating factors affecting or prolonging my recovery.

My doctor answered yes and recorded:

“ongoing workplace bullying/stress in the context of workers comp claim”

That matters. My doctor identified continuing circumstances connected with the workplace and the claim as factors prolonging recovery.

I was seeking treatment while still trying to obtain cooperation from the institutions responsible for injury management. The circumstances surrounding the claim were continuing to affect me.

Then came the question about suitable duties.

My doctor wrote:

“always been able to perform suitable duties — workplace not facilitating this”

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“Always been able.”

Those words deserve attention.

The statement recorded capacity for suitable duties alongside the workplace’s failure to facilitate them.

Where was the practical response? Where was the coordination with my nominated treating doctor to identify appropriate duties and establish the conditions for a safe return?

I wanted to recover in my job. My doctor’s statement shows that suitable duties remained an issue requiring action.

The form also asked whether a return-to-work plan or rehabilitation had been considered. My doctor marked yes and wrote:

“awaiting this from CCI”

There it was, on 10 January 2023, in the medical statement prepared for the insurer helping keep me financially afloat.

We were still waiting for CCI.

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More than two and a half years after my Injury Management Plan

My Injury Management Plan had been issued on 25 June 2020.

By 10 January 2023, more than two and a half years had passed. Yet my doctor was still recording that return-to-work planning was awaiting CCI.

Three days later, I was asking whether CCI would finally cooperate to implement the injury management plan agreement.

How does that become an acceptable state of affairs?

How does an injured worker remain responsible for chasing cooperation year after year while the institutions with the resources, lawyers and claims machinery continue controlling the process?

Time was not standing still for me. Treatment continued. Financial pressure continued. The burden of correspondence continued. So did the need to explain, again, why dealings with CCI had themselves become distressing.

Every further delay happened inside a human life.

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13 January 2023: three simple questions

In my update to TAL on 13 January 2023, I supplied the requested doctor’s statement and explained:

“I’m waiting for SIRA to ensure CCI answer three simple questions in writing”

The questions concerned who was managing my claim, whether that person understood the history, and whether injury management would finally proceed.

I asked:

“Is Sandy a case manager the way Jessica was?”

I asked whether Sandy had been briefed sufficiently to understand why CCI had become a trigger of compounded trauma for me.

And I asked:

“Is CCI finally going to cooperate to implement the injury management plan agreement?”

These were basic questions about responsibility, continuity and action.

Who was managing the claim? Did that person understand what had happened? Would CCI work with me and my nominated treating doctor to implement the agreed plan?

After years of harm, I needed written answers. I needed something clear enough to rely on.

How much more was I supposed to explain before those questions received a meaningful response?

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12 January 2023: journalists included as witnesses

My TAL update also explained that I had emailed SIRA on 12 January 2023, the previous day, and included two journalists from major newspapers as witnesses.

I wrote:

“It’s the only way to get legitimate action”

That sentence captures how far my trust in the regulatory process had deteriorated.

An injured worker should be able to obtain a meaningful response about claims management without bringing journalists into the correspondence. Yet by January 2023, I felt public scrutiny was necessary to make my requests visible and harder to disregard.

Where was the regulatory intervention that would secure cooperation?

What was the point of repeatedly asking me to engage if basic questions about case management and implementation remained unanswered?

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My doctor was supporting treatment while funding remained unresolved

My doctor’s separate letter of 10 January 2023 referred me for continuing care in the context of the workplace circumstances and workers’ compensation.

It also recorded my advice that payment or reimbursement through workers’ compensation would be forthcoming. I thought SIRA would finally enforce compliance. I honestly did despite my lack of trust. 

That distinction matters. The letter recorded what I had told my doctor. It didn’t establish that CCI had paid, approved reimbursement or resolved treatment funding.

It shows where we were: I was continuing to seek care while still expecting the workers’ compensation arrangements to operate as they should.

My doctor was documenting my circumstances and supporting treatment. I was supplying updates and pursuing cooperation.

We were still waiting for the claims process to meet those efforts with practical action.

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TAL’s support didn’t resolve CCI’s responsibilities

I remain grateful that TAL provided income protection. That support was crucial to my survival.

It didn’t implement my Injury Management Plan. It didn’t make ACU facilitate suitable duties. It didn’t answer the questions I was putting to CCI or secure the coordinated return-to-work response my doctor and I were seeking.

The workers’ compensation responsibilities lay with CCI and ACU. TAL’s support couldn’t be treated as a reason to leave those responsibilities unresolved.

The “handling” of my claim was deliberate and underhanded, and that legal manoeuvring within the system helped undermine the protection I was seeking while regulators failed to intervene. Repeatedly, despite my growing distress and fear.

These documents record the continuing obstacles, my doctor’s observations and the basic cooperation I was still seeking in January 2023.

That’s serious enough to demand answers.

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A human being was still waiting

On 10 January 2023, my doctor recorded that I had always been able to perform suitable duties, that the workplace wasn’t facilitating them, and that return-to-work planning was awaiting CCI.

On 13 January 2023, I told TAL that I was still asking for clarity about case management, a person properly briefed on my circumstances, and cooperation to implement my injury management plan agreement.

I was still cooperating. Still supplying evidence. Still seeking treatment. Still trying to get the statutory scheme to work as intended.

TAL was helping keep me afloat while I did it.

When I describe my experience as a process of human elimination, I mean the cumulative wearing away of a person’s resources, security, health and voice while they wait for institutions to act.

There was a human being behind those forms.

I wanted support to recover in my job. In January 2023, my doctor and I were still asking for the cooperation that could help make that possible.

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 618-619.

I am frightened and writing my story publicly for my safety after exhausting the avenues reasonably available to obtain protection. I want the harm to stop so I can recover safely in my job.

Twenty Dollars, a Lifetime of Labor Votes, and the Constituent Chris Minns Betrayed - January 2023

On 1 January 2023, I received a fundraising text from NSW Labor.

“New year, new Premier?”

It asked for money to help elect a Minns Labor government.

By then, there was no trust left.

I had donated $20 earlier, around the time I first approached Chris Minns, before the betrayal I describe.

By the time that text arrived, I had already experienced months of anguish trying to obtain meaningful help from my elected representative with SafeWork NSW and SIRA. In my experience, his office had failed to engage properly with my records or discuss the regulatory failures I needed addressed.

I experienced those six months as torture. By 9 May 2022, my distress had become so severe that my life was at risk.

I had almost lost my home. I had been forced to draw on my superannuation. The ripple effect reached into my finances, my health, my family and the security I had worked so hard to build.

Then came the encounter at the event near the top of my street in November 2022. It left me feeling as though I didn’t even belong in my own neighbourhood.

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But I do belong here. This is my community.

I worked hard to earn my home and build my life here. Seeking help from my elected representative should never have left me feeling humiliated or pushed to the margins of the place I call home.

So when that fundraising text arrived on 1 January 2023, I didn’t feel hope. I felt the nightmare intruding again.

Could I not have even one day’s peace? Even New Year’s Day?

After everything I had experienced, Labor was still reaching into my life to ask for money to help put Chris Minns in power.

That earlier $20 donation remains one of the biggest regrets of my life. Alongside it sits my regret at a lifetime of voting Labor.

My family’s loyalty came from our belief in safe work, fair conditions and dignity. My father was a loyal Labor voter. That history made the betrayal cut deeper.

The donation belonged to an earlier moment, when I still believed my representative might help. By New Year’s Day 2023, that belief had already been shattered.

 

NSW Labor fundraising text, recorded as 1 January 2023

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Concern for political careers. Where was the concern for mine?

In an email on 16 January 2023, I referred to a comment attributed to Minns about the Liberal Party:

“They seem hell-bent on destroying each other’s political careers.”

I challenged him about the contrast.

He could speak publicly about politicians destroying one another’s careers. What about a constituent telling him that everything she had built through two decades of work was being stripped away?

I wrote about what I alleged was employer fraud and serious WHS misconduct. I described the threat to my health, my work and everything I had accrued through years of service.

I wanted him to see the person whose working life was being placed in jeopardy.

I had supported other people in their career progression. I had contributed to my university community. I had worked, saved and planned. My life deserved the same serious attention politicians gave to their own futures.

——

Health. Superannuation. Income. Leave. My life.

My email described:

“theft of health, finances (including hundreds of thousands in my superannuation and my well-earned income), accrued leave entitlements (personal, annual, long service)”

Read those words slowly.

Health. Retirement savings. Earned income. Personal leave. Annual leave. Long service leave.

These were the resources I had built through work. The security that was supposed to sustain me through illness and into later life.

I reported harassment, privacy violations, blocked telecommunications and isolation from my colleagues and work community. I also alleged intimidation affecting my family.

The harm reached far beyond an office or a claims file. It followed me into my home, my finances, my relationships and my capacity to imagine a secure future.

I told him:

“inflation, cost of living and mortgage repayments are on the rise and I’m a single woman with no one supporting me”

That was what his constituent was saying on 16 January 2023.

How much more plainly did I need to explain my vulnerability?

How much more did I have to lose before the warning became urgent enough?

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My workplace became a campaign backdrop

I also confronted Minns about his campaign visit to my work community.

I wrote:

“You took a photo for your political campaign at my work community, where I have every right to recover in my job”

In the email, I recorded the accompanying social media message as:

“all workers deserve fair conditions and pay. But they need a government that listens.”

My response was:

“Firstly you don’t listen.”

I meant it.

I was a worker from that community. I was asking for fair conditions, safety and an effective response to the regulatory failures I had reported.

Seeing my work community used to promote a promise of listening to workers felt cruel.

There was room for the campaign photograph. There was room for the public message about fair pay and conditions.

Where was the effective response to the woman who had already brought him records about what was happening there?

See: The Social Media Post I Saw on 29 April 2022

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The questions I asked before he became Premier

I wrote:

“I shared documents with you regarding the failure of the current NSW government to keep workers safe and investigate worker’s compensation fraud.”

I specifically identified the records I had supplied about SIRA and SafeWork NSW.

Then I asked:

“Did you review the records and take the matter to parliament?”

And:

“Did you review the records and discuss the issue with my employer when you paid a visit with fellow Western Sydney Labor MPs for your campaign?”

Those questions were asked on 16 January 2023.

They deserve documented answers.

What did he read? What did his office do? Were the concerns escalated? Was anyone required to explain the failures I alleged? Was my employer asked about the matters I was raising?

The email records my questions. The actions taken behind the scenes must be accounted for through the relevant records.

I shouldn’t have had to spend years trying to discover what happened to evidence I supplied while pleading for protection.

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“I don’t think they’re going to give you your job back?”

In the same email, I asked about a comment by Cheryl Han, a member of his electorate staff:

“I don’t think they’re going to give you your job back?”

I described having to follow up again after six months of distress, including attempts to obtain a meeting.

What was that comment based on?

Had someone spoken to my employer? Was it an assumption? Had the safety and injury management records been examined? Had anyone understood that I had not resigned and was seeking recovery in my role, a legal obligation both employer and insurer breached as per injury management plan agreement?

I wanted the truth.

My job represented twenty years of contribution, relationships, knowledge and service. My safety and recovery required serious attention.

An unexplained prediction from staff at the Kogarah electorate office, about whether my employer would “give” me my job back left me with more questions, more distress and no clear protection.

See also The Day I Almost Didn’t Come Back – Kogarah Electorate Office - May 2022

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I would not become invisible

I told him:

“I’m not a wallflower in my university community. I will also not be a wallflower on this issue of serious misconduct, gross negligence of not reasonably managing psychosocial hazards.”

I said I wouldn’t remain silent about the discrimination, harassment, bullying and adverse action.

That was my voice refusing to disappear.

I had already experienced isolation. I was already struggling to make institutions hear me. I was determined that the records would survive even when the effort of explaining them was exhausting me.

I also wrote:

“Truly influential leaders have integrity, and are willing to sacrifice their own comfort for the greater vision and for a cause they believe in”

Integrity is tested when the evidence is uncomfortable and the person asking for help has little power.

——

My father’s memory is part of this betrayal

My father was a loyal Labor voter. He influenced our family’s voting because we associated Labor with the dignity of working people.

I lost my father to suicide and his memory is precious to me. So are the values we carried as a family: honest work, contribution, safe conditions and fair treatment.

When I speak about a lifetime of Labor votes, I’m speaking about something deeply personal. It was a belief that the people we supported would stand beside us when we needed them.

The one time we desperately needed that belief honoured, my elected representative was Chris Minns.

I feel that he disrespected my father’s legacy and the trust our family placed in Labor.

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25 March 2023: the election. 28 March 2023: the premiership.

New South Wales voted on 25 March 2023.

Chris Minns was sworn in as Premier on 28 March 2023. 

My warning was already in his inbox before that transfer of power.

The damage had begun under the previous government. They also have questions to answer.

But on 28 March 2023, Minns acquired the responsibilities of government.

He was my local member and now the Premier. His government had the responsibility to address the continuing failures I was reporting.

In my experience, the power changed hands while the abandonment continued.

I allege that the failure to secure meaningful investigation and effective protection allowed further harm, while the institutions I was challenging remained protected from the accountability I sought.

That allegation deserves independent scrutiny.

——

Sophie Cotsis, Jihad Dib, and the “Yes Minister” response

I use “Yes Minister” to describe what I have experienced: official explanations accepted, correspondence referred, and a distressed worker returned to the same processes she has already reported as failing her.

My questions concern Sophie Cotsis, the minister responsible for work health and safety, and the response to my reports about SafeWork NSW.

They also concern Jihad Dib, whose customer service portfolio encompasses SIRA, and the response to my allegations about employer and insurer conduct within the workers compensation statutory scheme.

In a joint message updated on 19 September 2025, the two ministers supported coordinated agency work to improve claims experiences, return to work and accountability. 

What has that meant for me?

My Injury Management Plan was issued on 25 June 2020.

I am still seeking employer and insurer cooperation for its implementation, effective coordination with my treating practitioners, proper investigation of alleged wrongdoing, and controls that allow safe recovery in my job.

——

Every year of delay has a human cost.

My health doesn’t pause while correspondence circulates. My financial obligations don’t pause. My family’s distress doesn’t pause.

I want the relevant agencies to exercise their powers properly and account for their decisions. I want the hazards addressed. I want the opportunity to recover in the job I have served for twenty years.

——

A $20 donation. Losses exceeding $1.2 million.

I estimate the losses arising from the underlying conduct and continuing failures to protect me at more than $1.2 million.

That’s my estimate of the broader damage. I hold him politically accountable for his response after being informed, and for his government’s response to the continuing harm.

The $20 donation is now a bitter symbol.

I helped fund a promise that workers would be heard. I then watched more of my security disappear while continuing to ask for help.

Retirement savings. Income. Stability. The ability to plan. The ordinary peace of believing that somebody with responsibility will act when shown evidence of serious harm.

The money matters enormously. So does what has happened to my trust.

I cannot put a neat dollar figure on the fear, humiliation and exhaustion of repeatedly asking institutions to recognise that I am a human being.

——

2 November 2026: I am still asking

As I write on 2 November 2026, another NSW election is approaching. It’s scheduled for 13 March 2027. 

I cannot speak for every person in New South Wales. I can speak about the dark years my family and I have endured.

Before another request for votes, I want answers:

 

• What did Minns and his office do with the SafeWork and SIRA records I supplied before the 25 March 2023 election?

• Were my concerns raised in Parliament, with my employer, or with the relevant agencies?

• What was the basis for the electorate staff statement I quoted on 16 January 2023?

• What independent scrutiny has his government secured of my allegations and the regulatory response?

• Why am I still seeking implementation of the Injury Management Plan issued on 25 June 2020?

• Who will examine whether institutions were protected while a constituent continued to suffer?

The records need scrutiny. Decisions need reasons. Those responsible need to answer.

——

I can never vote NSW Labor again

I can never vote NSW Labor again.

That sentence carries a lifetime of family history and the grief of discovering what our loyalty meant when we needed help.

I regard the failure to respond effectively to my repeated warnings as despicable, reprehensible and morally indefensible.

I wanted safety. I wanted fair conditions. I wanted to recover in my job. I wanted my family to stop watching me be harmed.

My father’s memory deserves respect. My family deserves respect and answers. My working life deserves protection.

On 1 January 2023, Labor asked me to help elect a new Premier.

On 16 January 2023, I put my warning to him in writing.

On 28 March 2023, he became Premier.

On 2 November 2026, I’m still asking what he did to protect the constituent who had already told him she was being harmed.

Twenty dollars. A lifetime of Labor votes.

And a human being still waiting for accountability.

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 615, 624

I am frightened and writing my story publicly for my safety after exhausting the avenues reasonably available to obtain protection. I want the harm to stop so I can recover safely in my job.