There is a particular cruelty in being left alone while harm is done to you.
Not the solitude one chooses.
Not the quiet of reflection.
But the isolation that is imposed — where every door you turn to for safety is closed, and every system that should protect you, instead, looks away.
That kind of loneliness is not accidental.
It is structural.
It is profound human cruelty.
I was made to feel unsafe everywhere I turned.
Personally.
At work.
Within regulatory systems.
Inside institutions that spoke endlessly of care, values, and protection — while offering none of it in practice.
Interference: When Family Trauma Is Reopened and Exploited
My family carries a deep and painful history of interference.
Unsafe relatives interfered repeatedly in our family life when we were children.
They exploited vulnerabilities.
They crossed boundaries.
They destabilised relationships.
They targeted.
That interference did not merely cause conflict — it contributed to catastrophic harm.
It played a role in my father’s breakdown and suicide.
This is not metaphor.
It is history.
Our family learned, at great cost, that interference can destroy lives.
That trauma never left our nervous systems.
So when, years later, institutions and senior executives intruded into my most vulnerable moments — into my grief, my home, my family, my private life — the wound was not new.
It was reopened.
The exploitation of vulnerability.
The invasion of privacy.
The use of family circumstances as leverage.
The expectation that I would absorb it quietly, professionally, alone.
The same pattern, in a different uniform.
Being Left to Carry the Burden Alone
What compounded the harm was not only what was done — but who was missing.
There was no trauma-informed response.
No protective buffering.
No meaningful recognition of cumulative harm.
No understanding of family trauma, grief, or psychological injury.
I was left alone to navigate:
- institutional harassment,
- retaliation for speaking up,
- misuse of private family information,
- escalating psychological injury,
- and a regulatory system that treated trauma as inconvenience.
I was expected to carry this burden quietly, competently, and without visible distress — while the harm itself continued.
This is not resilience-building.
It is abandonment.
It was not only what was done to me — but the fact that I was left without a support network while it was happening.
I was isolated.
I was shamed.
I was made to feel responsible.
And I was expected to carry the entire burden of serious systemic abuse and systemic failure alone.
I was subtly — and sometimes explicitly — made to feel that the problem was me.
That I was difficult.
That I was demanding.
That I was emotional.
That I should manage it better.
That I should be quieter.
That I should absorb more.
This is how guilt and shame are weaponised against people who speak up.
When Regulators Breach Their Own Obligations
The regulators did not merely fail to protect me.
They breached their own statutory obligations.
It was easier to hide behind a computer.
Easier to deflect.
Easier to delay.
Easier to proceduralise trauma out of existence.
Easier to push the burden back onto the injured person.
That choice is not neutral.
It is precisely this attitude — this avoidance, this deflection, this ethical failure — that causes psychological injury in our workplaces.
And it has been modelled, repeatedly, by SIRA NSW and SafeWork NSW.
When those charged with protecting workers demonstrate indifference, minimisation, or hostility toward harm, the damage does not stop.
It escalates.
Regulators Must Not Become Secondary Perpetrators
Targets of abuse at work do not need WHS regulators to add to the abuse.
They need compassion.
They need protection.
They need to be believed.
They need intervention — not obstruction.
Frontline SafeWork NSW staff, acting under managerial direction, hanging up on a victim of serious workplace abuse for three and a half hours is not a service failure.
It is serious abuse.
And it tells injured workers everything they need to know about how safe it is to seek help.
A Warning Based on Lived Experience
I repeat what I have said this year — including on the public record in the NSW Parliament:
If you are being seriously harassed and abused at work, and you report that abuse through SafeWork NSW’s Speak Up form, you should expect to be shut down and/or subjected to further harmful treatment and gross negligence.
That is not a theoretical risk.
It is lived experience.
But Not in 2026
Not anymore.
Not in silence.
Not in isolation.
Not one by one.
In 2026, we are uniting to speak collectively — because this must finally be called out.
Public money comes with public accountability.
And when regulators know the harm —
document it —
receive it —
witness it —
and still do nothing —
they are no longer bystanders.
They know the harm.
And knowledge creates responsibility.
SafeWork NSW and the Absence of Trauma-Informed Protection
A system that claims to protect workers but lacks trauma-informed training is not neutral.
It is dangerous.
For years, I encountered a regulatory culture — particularly within SafeWork NSW — that demonstrated:
- a failure to understand psychological injury,
- a failure to recognise institutional betrayal,
- a failure to protect workers from reprisals by senior executives of a PCBU,
- and a failure to account for the impact on families.
Processes were rigid.
Responses were procedural.
Human context was stripped away.
I was not met with care.
I was met with deflection.
And while this occurred, I was isolated — navigating a cruel, zero trauma-informed system entirely on my own.
Do Not Believe the Lies
Do not believe the lies of the WHS Minister.
Do not believe the polished narratives that claim workers are “irreplaceable” while the system quietly destroys them.
Do not believe campaigns funded with public money that mask misconduct beneath slogans — while failing to implement genuine trauma-informed protections.
Because behind those campaigns:
- workers are still being targeted,
- families are still being harmed,
- senior executives still escape accountability,
- regulators still lack the training required to understand trauma,
- and the human cost is still borne by individuals left alone.
Words without protection are not values.
Campaigns without accountability are not reform.
They are cover.
Unsafe Everywhere
One of the most destabilising aspects of institutional abuse is the collapse of refuge.
Work is unsafe.
Reporting is unsafe.
Regulators are unsafe.
Escalation is unsafe.
Silence is unsafe.
Speaking is unsafe.
There is nowhere to stand.
Your body absorbs the threat — hypervigilance, exhaustion, fear — not because you are weak, but because your environment is hostile.
Human beings are not meant to endure prolonged harm without support.
When they are forced to, the injury becomes systemic.
Silence Is Not Neutral
What wounded me most was not only what was done.
It was the absence of anyone saying:
- “This is wrong.”
- “You are not alone.”
- “We will intervene.”
- “Your family matters too.”
When institutions do not intervene, they are not passive observers.
They become participants.
A Moral Line That Was Crossed
There is a moral line crossed when a person is isolated, targeted, and left to carry unbearable weight alone — especially when that isolation is enabled by systems meant to protect.
This is not a misunderstanding.
It is not an administrative failure.
It is not an unfortunate oversight.
It is a breach of humanity.
Loneliness imposed by power is a form of violence.
And naming it matters.
Because silence is how these systems survive.
To be left alone in harm is not resilience.
It is cruelty.
And no amount of branding, messaging, or political reassurance can change that truth.
View:
SafeWork NSW’s Irreplaceable Campaign
How much the SafeWork NSW Irreplaceable campaign cost taxpayers
 |
| My Family |
