When the System Becomes the Stressor - August 2021

“Trauma is not what happens to you. It’s what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you.” – Dr. Gabor Maté

In August 2021, I wrote to government offices asking for urgent help.

Not because I didn’t understand “process.”

But because I was collapsing under a system that had already failed its legal obligations to me.

The documents speak for themselves.

One email was an appeal for accountability — raising concerns that regulators tasked with enforcing workplace safety were failing to act on psychosocial hazards and serious compliance breaches.

The other was a plea for urgent financial relief after a determination had been issued, yet payment of back-dated weekly benefits was stalled in bureaucracy.

Together, they capture something deeper than administrative frustration.

They show what happens when delay becomes harm.

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The Reality Behind “Back Pay”

By July 2021, a Personal Injury Commission determination had been issued.

Weekly payments were owed. But the insurer gamed the system by issuing “back pay” from date they declined, after delaying and then declining a legitimate claim, to the date of the PIC mediation. 

I had no idea what was going on around me. But I do believe Catholic Church Insurance intended to throw a tiny bit of money at me (part of what’s legally owed anyway), while thinking they would successfully avoid their entire workers compensation statutory obligations. 

This is also what caused greater frustration and process trauma regarding my experience with workers compensation solicitors. There’s more on this topic later in my story.

For this part, as Catholic Church Insurance attempted for months to financially crush me, and undermine the entire reason the NSW Workers Compensation scheme exists, instead of funds being processed promptly, I was told the insurer required Centrelink clearance before releasing payment.

On paper, that sounds procedural.

In lived reality, it meant:

• Overdue property bills

• Threats of credit impairment

• Inability to pay insurance and registration

• Difficulty accessing prescribed medication for hypertension

• Escalating family conflict caused by financial desperation

• Trauma re-triggered by forced re-engagement with Centrelink

Every additional day of delay compounded both financial and psychological harm.

This is what regulators often fail to calculate:

Delay is not neutral. Delay is an active stressor.

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Psychosocial Hazards Are Not Abstract

In my earlier correspondence, I raised concerns that psychosocial hazards in the workplace were not being taken seriously, and that enforcement powers available to agencies were not being properly exercised.

Psychosocial hazards are not about “hurt feelings.”

They are about:

• Bullying and intimidation

• Isolation and ostracisation

• Misuse of health information

• Abuse of power

• Retaliation following injury

When these risks are unmanaged, they cause diagnosable injury.

When regulators fail to intervene, the harm escalates.

And when an injured worker is then forced into prolonged financial deprivation due to compensation delays, the workplace injury becomes a systemic injury.

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Bureaucracy as Re-Trauma

One line from my email stands out:

“I can’t be told about process now. I’m in distress, crippled financially, alone and afraid.”  

That was not theatrics.

It was physiological reality.

• My blood pressure had spiked.
• I was experiencing dizziness and visual disturbance.
• I had been diagnosed with hypertension related to work-induced stress.

Yet instead of stabilisation and recovery under the workers compensation scheme, I was navigating:

• Legal correspondence

• Regulator complaints

• Ministerial escalation

• Banking threats

• Loan stress

• Centrelink clearance processes

Workers compensation exists to prevent exactly this cascade.

When compliance fails at multiple levels — employer, insurer, regulator — the injured worker absorbs the systemic failure.

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Transparency Should Not Be Punished

In my emails to ministerial offices, I emphasised that I had complied with every rule asked of me.

I provided evidence.

I engaged with process.

I sought cooperation.

What I did not receive was reciprocal compliance.

The legislation governing workers compensation and workplace safety is not optional. It is not aspirational. It is enforceable law.

When enforcement bodies fail to enforce, and insurers delay statutory entitlements, the system drifts from protection into harm.

Public confidence erodes.

And injured people are left fighting alone.

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The Broader Question

This raises broader questions:

• What safeguards exist to prevent payment (and back-payment) delays after formal determinations?

• How are psychosocial hazards escalated when regulators decline to act?

• What oversight mechanisms activate when enforcement units themselves are the subject of complaint?

• At what point does delay become a breach of statutory duty?

If workplace mental health is genuinely a priority, enforcement must be real — not rhetorical.

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I Survived. Many Don’t.

In one of the emails, I wrote that I may have “miraculously survived”.

That sentence was not dramatic.

It was an acknowledgment of how close prolonged financial distress, institutional silence, and untreated psychosocial injury can push a human being.

Many people do not survive this process.

That is why documentation matters.

That is why transparency matters.

That is why enforcement matters.

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Final Reflection

A workers compensation scheme is supposed to provide stability after injury.

When it becomes another source of instability, something has gone deeply wrong.

This is about accountability.

If psychosocial hazards are recognised in legislation, they must be recognised in practice.

If determinations are issued, payments must follow without unnecessary harm.

And if regulators are entrusted with public power, that power must be exercised — not avoided.

Because behind every file number is a nervous system trying to survive.

And survival should never depend on how loudly someone can fight back.

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Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 181 and 183.

SIRA NSW - Understanding the claims journey - https://www.sira.nsw.gov.au/workers-compensation-claims-guide/understanding-the-claims-journey