CEO of SIRA NSW - When the System Breaks You, Your Nervous System Speaks - November 2021

Early November 2021.

I had a paid LinkedIn subscription.

Not to network.

Not to advance my career.

Not to build a profile.

I paid because it was the only way left to try to reach the person at the top — the CEO of SIRA — after months and years of silence, deflection, and harm.

There was no pathway left inside the system.

So I tried to go around it.

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Before You Judge, Understand the Context

There are moments in this journey I hesitate to even speak about.

Not because they didn’t happen —

but because I know how easily they can be judged.

Moments where the tone of my communication reflected something far deeper than words:

• prolonged fear

• escalating distress

• a nervous system under sustained pressure

• the reality of being unheard for far too long

And yes — people do judge distress. Especially those who contributed to it.

But judgement without context is not insight. 

It is avoidance.

Those moments did not come out of nowhere.

They were shaped — slowly, cumulatively — by what came before.

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What I Was Actually Asking For

Behind that outreach — behind the urgency, the persistence, the escalation — were not unreasonable demands.

They were basic, lawful expectations.

I was asking for:

• A properly assigned and identifiable case manager

• Implementation of the Injury Management Plan

• Safe and lawful return-to-work coordination, including enforcement of a no-contact requirement

• Restoration of my weekly payments

• Direct communication with my Nominated Treating Doctor

• Regulatory intervention where non-compliance was evident

• Basic procedural fairness

These were not extraordinary requests.

They were the minimum obligations of the system.

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What Happens When a System Doesn’t Respond

When a person is injured at work, there is a legal framework that is supposed to protect them.

There are meant to be:

• clear communication

• coordinated return-to-work support

• accountability

• enforcement when obligations are not met

But when those mechanisms fail — repeatedly — something else takes hold.

The system goes quiet.

And that silence becomes a form of harm in itself.

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The Nervous System Under Prolonged Threat

When your nervous system is exposed to ongoing, unresolved threat, it doesn’t simply “stay calm.”

It adapts.

And those adaptations are survival responses — not personal failings.

Over time, this is what that looks like:

• Hypervigilance becomes constant

• The body cannot stand down

• Escalation becomes inevitable

• Your thinking becomes crowded with unresolved detail

• Fear becomes your environment

• Trust erodes completely

This is what system-induced trauma looks like.

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Institutional Gaslighting and Mobbing

There is a particular kind of harm that happens when institutions:

• ignore or minimise evidence

• delay action without explanation

• redirect responsibility between agencies

• continue processes that worsen harm

• fail to intervene when they have the power to

Over time, this creates a destabilising effect.

You begin to question:

• your own reality

• whether you are being heard

• whether anyone will act

• whether you are safe

When this occurs across multiple actors — employer, insurer, regulator — it becomes institutional.

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The Point Where Process Breaks Down

By November 2021, I had:

• followed formal complaint pathways

• provided extensive and structured evidence

• engaged with multiple regulators

• sought assistance from elected representatives

• made every effort to comply and return to work

And still:

• there was no meaningful intervention

• no enforcement of obligations

• no restoration of safety or income

At that point, what remained was not a functioning system.

It was a void.

And in that void, I reached for the only option left to me.

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What Happened Next Matters

I later received confirmation from SIRA NSW’s Senior Complaints Manager that my communication had, in fact, reached the office of the CEO.

It was not lost.

It was not overlooked.

It was received.

And then — it was ignored.

What followed was not support.

It was not care.

It was not intervention.

Instead, I was met with responses from “Customer Care” that were:

• dismissive

• patronising in tone

• devoid of any meaningful action

At a time when I was already in significant distress, those responses did not stabilise the situation.

They escalated it.

And then, when my distress became visible — when I continued to seek help — I was blocked.

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What Was Actually Happening

This was not an ordinary complaint.

I was a worker already:

• experiencing the effects of prolonged institutional harm

• attempting to navigate multiple system failures

• asking for a psychosocially safe work environment

• seeking enforcement of obligations that existed in law

The risk was not theoretical. The harm was already occurring.

And it was entirely foreseeable that:

• ignoring escalation,

• responding in a dismissive manner, and

• cutting off communication

would compound that harm.

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A Serious Question of Conduct

What does a regulator believe will happen when:

• a distressed, injured worker reaches escalation point,

• makes direct contact at the highest level,

• is acknowledged internally…

• and then deliberately not engaged with?

What is expected to happen to that person?

Because this is not a question of service quality.

It is a question of duty, responsibility, and foreseeable harm.

Blocking a person in visible distress is not neutral.

In this context, it is an active decision.

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This Is Not “Customer Care”

“Customer Care” should mean:

• listening

• responding

• de-escalating

• protecting

It should not mean:

• minimising

• patronising

• disengaging

• silencing

Especially not when dealing with a person already harmed by the system.

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A Call for Accountability

This raises serious questions that remain unanswered:

• Can the current CEO respond to this conduct?

• Can the responsible Minister provide a position?

• Can the Secretary of the NSW Department of Customer Service account for how this aligns with public sector obligations?

Because SIRA is not a private entity.

It is a regulator entrusted with protecting injured and vulnerable workers.

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What You Don’t See

You don’t see:

• the years of trying to do everything “properly”

• the restraint exercised for far longer than most people could sustain

• the cumulative impact of being unheard

• the toll of living in a constant state of fear and uncertainty

You don’t see how far someone has been pushed before they reach that point.

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A Quiet Legal Reality

When statutory systems:

• fail to act on known risks

• allow harm to continue

• ignore or deflect evidence

• and provide no procedural fairness

they raise serious questions about lawfulness, accountability, and governance.

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Why This Matters

It matters because it is about what happens when:

• oversight fails

• enforcement is absent

• responsibility is endlessly redirected

The outcome is predictable.

People deteriorate.

Not because they are weak — but because the system designed to protect them has not functioned.

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Final Reflection

If you encounter someone in distress, the question is not:

“What is wrong with them?”

The question is:

“What has happened to them — and why did no one intervene sooner?”

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Call to action:

Regulators and decision-makers must confront the real-world impact of prolonged non-response — and enforce the obligations that exist on paper, in practice, and in time.

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 212