My Story - My Voice

Thursday, September 3, 2026

Fair Work Ombudsman - Still Asking Someone to Act - August 2022

By August 2022, I was still persisting with the Fair Work Ombudsman.

Still writing. Still compiling evidence. Still sending records. Still trying to explain that what was happening to me wasn’t an ordinary workplace disagreement and not something that could be passed from one organisation to another until I eventually disappeared from view.

I was one person.

I had no union standing beside me. No organisation protecting me. No institutional power behind me. No one taking responsibility for bringing the escalating harm to an end.

And by then, I was also frightened of the very systems I was approaching for help.

——

Self-preservation while still trying to be heard

I hadn’t even been able to properly engage with all of the previous responses I had received by this point. That wasn’t because I had stopped pursuing the matter.

It was self-preservation.

There’s a profound contradiction in having to keep approaching institutions for protection when your accumulated experiences with institutions have taught you that another response, another referral, another dismissal or another failure to understand would cause even more harm.

I had to protect myself from that while somehow maintaining enough agency to continue.

So I kept sending the evidence.

I kept documenting.

I kept trying to make the seriousness impossible to miss.

One of the records accompanying this continuing approach to the Fair Work Ombudsman captures exactly how urgent that position had become:

“Please help end this financial and psychological abuse as adverse action for requesting workplace rights generally protected under the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), before it ends me.”

I wrote that this was the last time I could relive the material and send it. I described the indignity of being silenced, not listened to, not believed and denied a meaningful voice in explaining what I was experiencing.

This was no longer simply about navigating bureaucracy.

It was about trying to survive bureaucracy while still asking bureaucracy to do its job.

——

I kept trying to escalate what was serious misconduct

My correspondence explained that I had already attempted to take my concerns higher within ACU.

I referred to communications from October and November 2021 in which I had attempted to bypass the ordinary HR notification channel because, as I explained to the Fair Work Ombudsman, that channel went directly to Rena Christmann — the very person whose conduct I was complaining about.

I described creating a separate secure email account and sending material by courier specifically for the Vice-Chancellor, with an instruction that ACU executive staff were not to violate my privacy again.

See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/04/vice-chancellor-on-notice-delivered.html

Yet I was still asking:

Who was going to act?
Who was going to notify the Chancellor?
Who had jurisdiction?

And, critically, what exactly was within the jurisdiction of the Fair Work Ombudsman?

I specifically asked:

“And what is in the jurisdiction of Sandra Parker, the Fair Work Ombudsman? I thought wage theft and non-compliance in paying one’s income, was exactly within her jurisdiction.”

I was trying to navigate jurisdictional boundaries while already traumatised, financially harmed and effectively acting as my own advocate.

I wasn’t sitting comfortably at a desk conducting an academic exercise about Australian regulatory architecture.

I was living the consequences while trying to work out which institution might finally intervene.

——

2 August 2022 — Part 3

Then, on 2 August 2022, I sent what I expressly described as “part 3 and final part” of my report to the Office of the Fair Work Ombudsman.

The opening sentence could hardly have been clearer:

“This is part 3 and final part of my very serious report of incidences of extensive adverse action for requesting workplace rights generally protected under the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth).”

With it, I enclosed a printed timeline covering July 2021 to the then-present, together with adjoining evidence on a USB.

I also explained that earlier USBs contained Folders covering July 2019 to June 2021, along with the Enterprise Agreement, university policies and procedures, timelines and introductory material.

This wasn’t a vague complaint.

By August 2022, I had constructed years of chronology and supporting records and delivered them to the regulator.

But even compiling that evidence was hurting me.

I wrote:

“I realised that it is more traumatic than I initially thought it would be, as I review and relive the blatant disregard of multiple laws, negligence, collusion to fraud and ongoing mobbing.”

That captures something administrative records rarely convey.

Every folder had a human cost.

Every chronology required me to go backwards.

Every piece of evidence meant reopening something I was simultaneously trying to survive.

——

“I could only handle so much in a week”

I told the Fair Work Ombudsman that I had already spoken with an officer and her team leader. I was also aware that the FWO had tried to contact me the previous week.

But I hadn’t simply ignored them.

I explained why I had been unable to respond:

“I was busy saving my home in creative ways from this appalling financial abuse and fraud from a university. I could only handle so much in a week, given I have no support.”

And then came the plea:

“Please don’t fob me off like the NSW government.”

That was where my relationship with regulation had reached.

I was still seeking government intervention while simultaneously trying to protect myself from what another regulatory failure might do to me.

I asked the FWO to continue reading and reviewing the evidence and to make decisions about what I described as “action steps, restitution, reparation and resolution.”

And I pleaded for what I had been asking for all along:

“I am pleading for the workplace mobbing to be stopped immediately. I have pleaded for too long.”

——

No union. No institutional protection. Nobody standing beside me.

My letter also directly confronted the role of the NTEU.

I asked that union leaders be investigated for what I alleged was collusion and contrasted the union’s public advocacy concerning wage theft and workplace health and safety with my own experience of trying to obtain support.

See:

Whatever institutional protections workers are supposed to have, I didn’t experience them as protections.

That was the extraordinary imbalance.

On one side were an employer, insurer, employment relations structures, lawyers, regulators and a union.

On the other side was me.

One person.

Trying to understand the Fair Work Act.
Trying to understand workers compensation.
Trying to understand which regulator had which jurisdiction.
Trying to preserve evidence.
Trying to protect my family from further harm.
Trying to keep a roof over my head.
Trying to preserve my retirement savings.
And trying to remain psychologically capable of opening the next letter.

——

$230,000 from my superannuation

The financial crisis was no longer theoretical.

In the 2 August letter, I told the Fair Work Ombudsman:

“I also need you to know I had to ‘steal’ a lot of money from my superannuation to save my home. We’re talking $230,000.”

That was my own language at the time — “steal” in quotation marks — because it felt like I was being forced to take from my own future simply to survive the present.

I explained that I needed my return to work statutory entitlements to pay my mortgage and bills. I want to recover safely in my job. I described what had happened as traumatic, degrading and humiliating.

See posts like:

And I wrote:

“No one protected me, supported me, defended my rights and stopped the abuse in its tracks.”

At the same time, another financial deadline was bearing down on me. I said that the superannuation money needed to be restored urgently or I risked losing another $30,000 associated with a property purchased through my SMSF, as well as the investment itself.

This was the parallel crisis continuing to unfold.

The workplace crisis.

The regulatory crisis.

The financial crisis.

And the psychological consequences of all of them.

They weren’t separate stories.

They were feeding one another.

——

Betrayed at every level

What stands out to me is how relentlessly I continued trying.

There’s a tendency, when looking backwards at a paper trail, to see letters, dates, USBs, folders, complaints and reference numbers.

I see the person who had to produce them.

I see myself trying to preserve my agency when almost every experience was telling me that my voice didn’t matter.

I was still telling the Fair Work Ombudsman exactly what I wanted:

“Please help from a Fair Work perspective.”

I asked for my twenty years of work and all the entitlements that had been taken from me, to be restored.

And once again, I asked for someone with authority to stop what I was experiencing:

“I need someone in authority to order the workplace mobbing to stop immediately.”

The letter ended politely:

“Once again, thank you in advance for your understanding, support and compassion.”

Even then.

Even after everything.

I was still asking institutions to demonstrate the integrity, humanity and responsibility I urgently needed from them.

——

Persistence was becoming an act of survival

By 2 August 2022, this had been going on for years.

And I was still trying.

That’s an important part of this chronology, because later outcomes cannot erase the repeated attempts that came before them.

I didn’t simply make one complaint and expect somebody else to solve everything.

I documented.
I followed up.
I compiled timelines.
I provided policies.
I supplied evidence.
I approached different authorities.
I tried internal escalation.
I tried the NTEU.
I tried regulators.

And when one pathway appeared to fail me, I searched for another.

All while experiencing institutional betrayal at every level.

The tragedy is that persistence itself had become dangerous to me. To continue advocating meant repeatedly returning to traumatic records and repeatedly risking another institutional response that I might not have had the psychological capacity to absorb.

But stopping meant surrendering my voice.

So I kept going.

Alone.

It wasn’t because the system had given me confidence that somebody would eventually listen, but because I still knew that what had happened mattered.

I still knew I had workplace rights.

I still knew that over twenty years of my successful working life mattered.

I still knew that my financial future mattered.

Despite being exhausted, frightened and betrayed by the very structures I had approached for protection, I was still trying to make somebody in authority understand:

This was serious. The harm was continuing. And I needed it to stop.

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 432-433.

——

Reference and reflection: FWO Workplace investigations

The Fair Work Ombudsman’s information about workplace investigations provides important context for this part of my story.

The FWO explains that investigations can involve gathering and examining evidence to determine whether workplace laws apply, whether they have been followed and, if not, what needs to be done to address the problem. Fair Work Inspectors can obtain employment records and other documents, seek evidence, conduct interviews and, in some circumstances, compel the production of information or documents.

The FWO also explains that it investigates only a small proportion of the requests for assistance it receives. Among the circumstances in which it says an investigation is more likely are where “the claims are very serious,” “the issue is widespread,” or “the people affected are vulnerable.”

Those words are difficult for me to read against the record of what I was communicating at the time.

By this stage, I wasn’t asking where I could find information about my workplace rights. I was repeatedly placing extensive evidence before a Commonwealth workplace regulator and communicating, in increasingly serious terms, the harm occurring and the vulnerability I was experiencing.

The FWO’s published information also describes the enforcement options that can follow an investigation where appropriate, including compliance notices, infringement notices, enforceable undertakings and litigation.

I can’t use a current webpage to retrospectively determine what decision the Fair Work Ombudsman should have made in my individual matter in 2022. That requires consideration of the law, evidence, jurisdiction and circumstances at the time.

But the webpage does help explain why I kept persisting.

I was trying to reach an authority that had investigative and enforcement powers under Commonwealth workplace law. I had provided information serious enough to warrant careful consideration of those powers.

That’s the significance of these records.

They document not only what I was reporting, but how hard I was trying to have it examined by someone with the authority to do something about it.

When I read the Fair Work Ombudsman’s own description of seriousness, vulnerability, investigation and enforcement, I’m left with an important question arising from this chronology:

What happened to the evidence I kept placing before the regulator, and what was done with it?

Reference: Fair Work Ombudsman, Workplace investigations

https://www.fairwork.gov.au/about-us/compliance-and-enforcement/workplace-investigations

Wednesday, September 2, 2026

SIRA NSW - When the Systemic Harm Reached My Superannuation

By July 2022, the consequences were no longer confined to my employment, my income, my health, or even my ability to keep a roof over my head.

They were beginning to seep into my superannuation and long-term investment strategy.

A self-managed super fund isn’t simply money sitting in an account. It represents years of work, contributions, planning and investment decisions intended to provide financial security in retirement. Decisions are made years in advance. Deposits are paid. Capital is allocated. Assets form part of an investment strategy.

I had one of those plans underway.

On 20 July 2022, a conveyancing firm contacted me regarding settlement of a property in Western Australia. They were preparing the settlement documentation and asking for the information necessary to progress the purchase.

This wasn’t some hypothetical investment I was thinking about making one day.

It was underway.

——

24 July 2022: The Snowball Reaches My SMSF

Four days later, on 24 July 2022, I forwarded that correspondence to a friend supporting me and wrote:

“What about this? I’m meant to buy this outright in my superannuation. I used that money to save my home. Am I going to forfeit another $30,000 deposit?”

That contemporaneous email captures the financial position far better than hindsight ever could.

I was meant to buy the property outright through my superannuation.

Instead, money allocated to that investment had been diverted because I was trying to save my home.

And now I was facing the possibility of losing another $30,000 deposit.

This is what a snowball effect actually looks like.

One financial consequence creates another.
Loss of income affects cash flow.
Cash-flow pressure affects the ability to meet ordinary expenses.
That pressure forces money to be redirected.
Redirecting money interferes with an investment strategy.
An interrupted investment strategy jeopardises a property transaction.
A jeopardised transaction puts a deposit at risk.

And the consequences then extend forward again — into assets that were intended to produce returns and ultimately support retirement.

The original harm doesn’t remain where it started. It compounds.

——

This Was My Retirement Money

There’s something particularly disturbing about reaching the point where your superannuation strategy becomes collateral damage.

I have worked since 2001 for my nationally registered, publicly funded university employer. I had built my career, accumulated employment entitlements and planned financially for my future.

Yet by July 2022, I was using money intended for an SMSF investment to protect my home.

That wasn’t an investment decision.

It was financial survival.

The documentary record shows that I understood what was happening while it was happening. On 24 July 2022, I wasn’t calculating a loss years later and trying to reconstruct how it occurred. I was asking in real time:

“Am I going to forfeit another $30,000 deposit?”

Even the word “another” matters.

Because none of this was occurring in isolation.

——

From Buying Outright to Needing Finance

The consequences continued.

On 9 August 2022, I responded to the conveyancer and explained that I had just settled on the purchase of the home I lived in and that my attention now had to turn back to the WA property.

Then, on 5 October 2022, I wrote something that shows how dramatically my financial position had changed:

“Initially I didn’t need a broker to finance and finalise the purchase, but due to unforeseen life challenges, I now do.”

That’s an extraordinary change in circumstances in less than three months.

The original plan was to purchase the property outright within my superannuation.

By October, I needed a finance broker to try to complete it.

That’s not merely an inconvenience.

It’s evidence of the deterioration of my financial capacity.

It illustrates why financial harm cannot always be measured simply by looking at a missing fortnightly payment or one isolated expense.

The consequences spread.

——

The Cost Is Also the Future That Money Was Supposed to Build

There’s another dimension to financial loss that’s easily overlooked.

If money earmarked for an investment has to be redirected elsewhere, the potential harm isn’t necessarily limited to the amount withdrawn or the deposit that may be forfeited.

There may also be the lost opportunity associated with the investment itself: potential capital growth, rental income, compounding returns and the effect on the broader SMSF investment strategy.

Those losses have to be calculated carefully and evidenced rather than assumed.

But the underlying point is important:

money diverted from a long-term investment strategy doesn’t simply disappear from one column of a spreadsheet. It can alter the trajectory of the portfolio itself.

And this was my superannuation.

My retirement.

My future financial security.

——

How Far Is One Worker Expected to Absorb the Consequences?

By this point, I was trying to navigate the consequences arising from my experience with my employer, its specialised workers compensation insurer and the systems that were supposed to protect workers from precisely this kind of cascading harm.

I was one person.

Yet I was having to fight on multiple fronts while simultaneously trying to protect the assets I had spent decades building.

My contemporaneous frustration on 24 July 2022 was unmistakable. After asking whether I was about to lose another $30,000, I wrote:

“How can someone have so much evidence of deceit, fraud, failure, incompetence and an outright disregard of multiple laws…”

Those were my words at the time, of what I was experiencing while trying desperately to get someone to listen and intervene.

And meanwhile, the financial snowball kept rolling.

Employment.
Income.
Leave.
Home.
Savings.
Investments.
Superannuation.

By July 2022, this was no longer only about what was happening to me at work.

It was reaching into assets accumulated from decades of work and into an investment strategy designed to protect a future that should never have been placed at risk in the first place.