The Parallel Crisis: While I Waited for Regulators, I Was Fighting to Save My Home - June 2022

26–28 June 2022

By late June 2022, my life had become two crises unfolding simultaneously.

One was visible in the endless letters to regulators, pleading for someone to enforce the legal obligations that should have protected an injured worker years earlier.

The other was happening quietly, behind the scenes, as I fought to stop my financial life from collapsing.

The two were never separate.

One caused the other.

Because the workers compensation system had failed to provide income support, failed to enforce return-to-work obligations and failed to intervene when compliance repeatedly broke down, the financial consequences spread far beyond my workplace.

They reached my home.

My investments.

My future.

These emails from 26–28 June 2022 capture that reality in real time.

They’re not property documents.

They’re evidence of what regulatory failure looks like when it spills into every corner of someone’s life.

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Every day became crisis management

By this point, I had become the coordinator of my own survival.

While psychologically injured, I was simultaneously trying to coordinate:

• solicitors;
• mortgage consultants;
• real estate agents;
• settlement documentation;
• trust account transfers;
• mortgage security arrangements;
• and increasingly urgent financial deadlines.

The irony wasn’t lost on me.

The workers compensation system had case managers.

Yet I had effectively become my own.

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A home that had to be saved at any cost

Only days earlier I had explored every possible option to keep my home.

I had even considered bringing my brother into the purchase to prevent losing it altogether.

But circumstances changed.

Instead, I accepted a significantly reduced offer on my Melbourne investment property because speed mattered more than value.

I explained to my solicitor:

“It’s a very low offer but a quick settlement.”

Those words weren’t about property strategy.

They were about survival.

This wasn’t an investor trying to maximise profit.

It was someone forced into sacrificing an asset simply to keep everything else from collapsing.

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Trying to hold everything together

As the paperwork intensified, so did the emotional exhaustion.

I sent document after document to my mortgage consultant, trying desperately not to overlook anything.

At one point I wrote:

“My health is really bad at the moment, so if there’s anything I’ve missed or need to do, just keep reminding me as we proceed to the end of this process.”

I was asking someone to help me remember what still needed doing because the cumulative trauma had left me exhausted.

For years I had been expected to carry burdens that should never have been mine alone.

Now I was terrified that one missed signature or one forgotten form could cost me my home as well.

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Someone actually responded

One detail stands out when I reread these emails.

My mortgage consultant responded almost immediately.

He replied:

“Thank you for this Vicki! I will get this sorted right away…”

It seems like such a small thing.

But after years of writing to regulators who delayed, redirected responsibility or simply failed to act, a straightforward response felt almost unfamiliar.

Here was someone acknowledging the information, taking ownership and moving the matter forward.

That was exactly what I had been pleading for from the statutory bodies responsible for enforcing compliance in my workers compensation claim.

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“I’ve become really run down from stress”

After obtaining confirmation that my solicitor had received the $210,000 trust account transfer required for the security swap, I immediately forwarded it to the bank.

But even this simple administrative step carried another glimpse into what was happening behind the scenes.

I wrote:

“I’ve become really run down from stress now. I hope I’ve done everything I need to do from my end for the time being.”

Then, despite everything, I still found myself encouraging others.

I ended the email by writing:

“We all need to keep faith, hope and love alive.”

I was trying to keep hope alive for everyone else while quietly wondering how much longer I could keep going myself.

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Every delay came with another financial cost

The financial pressure didn’t stop once the documents had been signed.

Settlement delays created new problems.

On 28 June 2022, I was trying to find ways to avoid further financial penalties.

I explained:

“Given personal circumstances, I hope I can avoid more cost financially if possible.”

To secure yet another settlement extension, it was suggested offering the Sydney vendor $10,000 compensation because the vendor had wanted settlement before the end of the financial year.

Without hesitation, I replied:

“Please … proceed as per suggestion in the email. I accept for such a suggestion to be put forward to the vendor.”

I wasn’t negotiating from strength. I was paying more simply to buy time.

Time that should never have been so expensive.

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I genuinely believed things were about to improve

Earlier in the process, I had written to my solicitor:

“I’d rather my brother gain from a business transaction than I lose my secure home just as everything is about to turn around for me. Compliance is finally about to be enforced in another important area of my life.”

Reading those words now is heartbreaking.

I truly believed accountability was finally approaching.

I believed someone would eventually enforce the law.

I believed the financial damage would stop.

Instead, it accelerated.

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This wasn’t a property story

It’s about regulatory failure made visible.

It shows what happens when statutory protections exist on paper but disappear in practice.

While regulators failed to enforce compliance, I was forced to liquidate investments, accept reduced offers, restructure loans, coordinate multiple professionals, negotiate settlement extensions and absorb escalating costs simply to keep a roof over my head.

This wasn’t a separate crisis running alongside my workers compensation claim.

It was the workers compensation claim.

The financial consequences had spread beyond the workplace and into every part of my life.

That is why I call this The Parallel Crisis.

Because while the system stood still, my life didn’t.

It unravelled…

While the institutional wage theft continued…

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 411-414

The Sound of Silence - June 2022

22 & 29 June 2022

There comes a point when asking for help becomes harder than carrying the suffering alone.

By 22 June 2022, I’d reached that point.

I wasn’t writing to strangers.

I wasn’t writing to people who didn’t know me.

I was writing to colleagues in Ministry. People who spoke about dignity, compassion, justice and community. People who knew me. People who had worked alongside me. People who knew I had dedicated more than twenty years of my life to our university community.

And yet, despite everything that had happened, I still found myself pleading to be heard.

In an email on 22 June 2022, I wrote:

“I’ve got no support and I’m very, very sick and alone… I need human support like every human person.”

Those words weren’t written to make anyone feel guilty.

They were written because they were true.

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My life had become a series of parallel crises.

My workers’ compensation claim remained unresolved.

My publicly funded university employer, who’d injured me in their decision to take aggressive adverse action for my requesting a psychosocially safe work environment, had still not made me feel safe.

The systems that were supposed to protect workers had failed to intervene.

My family’s privacy had also been violated by the University’s leaders.

That was my family’s privacy. It wasn’t something I ever expected to become intertwined with my workplace.

What distressed me most was that deeply private and tragic family circumstances hadn’t been treated with the dignity and confidentiality every person deserves.

Privacy is not a privilege.

It is part of respecting the dignity of every human person.

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Throughout those weeks, I kept returning to one word.

Integrity.

Not legal strategy.

Not public relations.

Integrity.

In that same email of 22 June 2022, I wrote:

“I need integrity not hypocrisy.”

Those words came from profound disappointment.

Because mission statements are easy to publish.

The Gospel is easy to quote.

Strategic plans are easy to write.

But integrity is revealed when someone within your own community is suffering.

It is revealed by whether people step towards that person…

…or quietly step away.

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A week later, on 29 June 2022, I found myself writing to my solicitor, not about legal tactics, but about survival.

I wrote:

“This is the outcome when no one listens.”

Those words weren’t directed at one person.

They reflected years of trying to be heard.

By my employer.

By my insurer.

By regulators.

And, perhaps most painfully, by members of a university community whose mission spoke so often about compassion, justice and the dignity of the human person.

Revisit my reflection on the Staff Code of Conduct for ALL staff: http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/10/its-what-you-do-that-defines-who-we-are.html

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One sentence from that email says it all:

“I’m not here to save the world. Right now, I’d be happy to just save myself.”

That was EXHAUSTION.

For years, I found myself battling a failed regulatory system to save:

My career.

My health.

My home.

My future.

By the end of June 2022, I was simply trying to survive.

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I don’t remember those weeks only because of the legal battles or the endless correspondence.

I remember them because I was still hoping that someone would hear what lay beneath the words.

Just someone willing to stop long enough to see that one of their own colleagues was drowning.

Perhaps that is what saddens me most.

Not that I kept asking for help.

But that I kept believing someone would answer.

And all I could hear…

…was the sound of silence.

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 367-368.

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Further Reading

In The Pain of Unbelonging: Why Workplace Bullying Hurts, psychologist Dorothy Suskind explores how workplace bullying damages our fundamental human need to belong. She explains that organisational silence, exclusion and institutional betrayal can leave people feeling isolated, unseen and disconnected from the very communities where they felt they belonged.

Much of that resonated with me.

The isolation has been one of the hardest parts of this journey.

But where my story differs is in what comes next.

I have never accepted that this should be the end of my relationship with the university community I served for more than twenty years.

The silence I experienced wasn’t simply colleagues drifting away. It was a culture where fear prevented people from reaching out, even when they wanted to. Workplace bullying doesn’t affect only its target. It changes the behaviour of everyone around it.

I won’t allow the abuse of power, failures of governance and breaches of statutory obligations to determine the ending of my story.

There must be accountability and natural justice. As Senator Tony Sheldon said, “public money comes with public accountability.” (See https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-19/senate-inquiry-interim-report-university-governance/105795694). 

As for “closure”, closure does not come from quietly accepting what should never have happened.

For me, this story ends when those with responsibility finally do what they should have done from the beginning: protect the dignity, safety and rights of the people entrusted to their care.

Suskind, D. (2025, 5 July). ‘The Pain of Unbelonging: Why Workplace Bullying Hurts.’ Psychology Today. [Online]: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/bully-wise/202507/the-pain-of-unbelonging-why-workplace-bullying-hurts/amp 

The Parallel Crisis: Dismantling My Future While the System Looked Away - June 2022

21–24 June 2022

On paper, the ten documents this post is based on are about selling a property.

In reality, they document something entirely different.

They record what happens when a statutory workers’ compensation scheme fails to do the very job it exists to do.

While my nationally registered, publicly funded university employer continued to ignore its legal obligations, while the specialised workers’ compensation insurer failed to implement my agreed Injury Management Plan or restore my income, and while the state regulators responsible for enforcing compliance failed to intervene, I wasn’t rebuilding my life.

I was dismantling it.

Over four days, these documents record the collapse of years of financial security—not because of poor financial decisions, but because every safeguard that should have protected an injured worker had failed.

 

My own words, written at the time, tell that story far better than hindsight ever could.

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By June 2022, I had been trying for over two years to have the workers’ compensation scheme operate as intended.

• My Injury Management Plan had never been implemented.
• My return to work had never occurred.
• My weekly income had never been restored.

Instead of recovering, I was funding my own survival.

Like many Australians, I had worked hard for years to build some financial security. My Melbourne investment property wasn’t simply bricks and mortar. It represented years of work, careful planning and sacrifice.

It was never supposed to become my emergency fund.

Yet that is exactly what it became, because the statutory protections that should have prevented this financial catastrophe simply failed.

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The first emails show someone trying desperately to hold everything together.

I wasn’t negotiating from a position of confidence.

I was negotiating while traumatised.

I was someone whose nervous system had been overwhelmed after years of institutional failure.

Yet while I was trying to manage that trauma, the practical realities of life didn’t stop.

Mortgage deadlines still existed.

Property contracts still had to be negotiated.

Bills still arrived.

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I now had to sell my investment property urgently to settle on and save my principal home. 

The offer that came was $352,250.

It was substantially lower than the property was worth. For the investment buyer, this wasn’t personal. It was just business. For me, it was very personal. It was everything I worked hard for and built responsibly in acquiring some humble assets and future security. 

I was placed in this vulnerable situation by a nationally registered, publicly funded university employer and its specialised insurer. All because I was so overworked and suffocating from a manager who was so toxic, that I’d reached breaking point in my health, safety and wellbeing, I was left with no choice but to request a psychosocially safe work environment. 

I almost lost my mind with this “offer”. I was cornered. Again. 

My instinct was to refuse.

I replied:

“I can’t accept this offer. Please proceed with the auction on Saturday, and depending what the outcome is, we’ll go from there.”

But that in itself posed risk. The outcome was uncertain. The offer was concrete. This was a financially coercive circumstance caused by employer in adverse action and insurer in an extension of this corporate misconduct. I guess Catholic Church Insurance assessed the “risk” and considered me an easy target to annihilate. Wrong decision, but they came close many times to succeeding in such morally bankrupt behaviour. 

The next sentence in my email regarding my initial refusal of that offer, still breaks my heart to read today.

“If anything happens to me, I want there to be something of value left for my family.”

That sentence wasn’t about property.

It was about the level of despair I had reached after years of fighting systems that were supposed to protect workers but instead left me carrying every consequence myself.

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While these negotiations were taking place, the legal pressure was mounting.

My solicitor advised that the vendor had extended the Notice to Complete only until 29 June 2022, warning that “time [was] of the essence.”

Every deadline increased the pressure.

Every delay inside the workers’ compensation system made those commercial deadlines harder to meet.

These weren’t parallel stories.

They were the same story.

One crisis was feeding the other.

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As the pressure intensified, even opening correspondence became overwhelming.

When my solicitor forwarded another letter regarding the purchase of my Sydney home, I couldn’t bring myself to process it alone.

Instead, I forwarded it to someone else and wrote only seven words:

“Please read for me. I’m so scared.”

That captures something the formal documents never could.

Trauma doesn’t just affect your emotions.

It affects your ability to think.

To process information.

To make decisions.

To cope with ordinary life.

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The documents also record me explaining this to the people trying to help me.

Writing to my lender and the real estate agent, I explained:

“My health and cognitive functioning is in a declined state at the moment, so I appreciate the support of details needing to be clarified, put in writing.”

This was contemporaneous evidence of the impact that years of chronic workplace trauma and regulatory failure had already had on my functioning.

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Eventually, I reached the point where there simply weren’t any good options left.

The property could pass in.

The purchase of my home could collapse.

Or I could accept a substantial loss.

So I did something I never wanted to do.

I sent a one-line email.

“I accept.”

One word. 

Accept. 

Behind that one word sat years of financial planning that I knew I was about to dismantle.

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The following day, I explained why.

“It’s a very low offer but a quick settlement.”

Those words were written because I’d been cornered financially by circumstances that should never have existed.

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The remaining documents I analysed for this post show the machinery of survival going into motion.

• The fully executed contracts.
• The Vendor Statement.
• The Discharge Authority.
• The Security Swap.
• The Loan Variation.

The proceeds from selling my Melbourne investment property would now be used to preserve the roof over my head in New South Wales. 

To a bank, these were routine transactions.

To me, they represented years of work disappearing because the statutory scheme had failed to prevent exactly this outcome.

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This is the part of workers’ compensation that statistics never capture.

People think compensation disputes are simply disagreements about benefits.

They don’t see: 

• The investments quietly sold.
• The retirement plans abandoned.
• The savings consumed.
• The properties lost.
• The financial futures rewritten.

They don’t see injured workers financing the consequences of regulatory failure while those responsible for enforcing compliance simply look away.

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I don’t see these ten documents as conveyancing records.

I see them as evidence that regulatory failure never stays inside a regulator’s office.

It reaches into:

• Bank accounts.
• Mortgage files.
• Property settlements.
• Investment portfolios.
• Retirement planning.

And eventually into every decision an injured worker is forced to make simply to survive.

The workers’ compensation claim was still unresolved.

The insurer was still failing to comply with its statutory obligations.

The regulators were still failing to enforce compliance.

But while they delayed, my life kept moving.

Deadlines still existed.

Contracts still had to be signed.

Properties still had to settle.

And piece by piece, I was dismantling the future I had spent decades building—not because I had made poor financial decisions, but because the statutory scheme designed to protect workers failed to do the very job it was created to perform.

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 401- 410.