Notice After Notice — Part 2: Email to Chris Minns’ Kogarah Electorate Office - March 2022

10 March 2022

Subject: “Please support my return to work asap”

On 10 March 2022, I sent another email to Chris Minns’ Kogarah electorate office while also continuing attempts to engage university governance and ethics leadership regarding my unresolved return-to-work situation, ongoing exclusion, and the failure to implement an agreed Injury Management Plan.

By this point, the situation had become critical. I sent another email. Another plea. Another attempt to stop the harm before it became irreversible.  

I was no longer simply asking for help. I was begging for lawful intervention.

I was asking elected representatives to help ensure my employer complied with its legal obligations under workers’ compensation and work health and safety law (via the regulators SIRA NSW and SafeWork NSW, who repeatedly refused to take action). 

I was asking for the Injury Management Plan — already agreed to by the insurer — to finally be implemented.

Instead, I remained trapped in a system of delay, silence, and escalating harm.

This was a worker trying to survive prolonged exclusion, financial collapse, and psychological injury while the people with power delayed action.

The subject line of the email says everything:

“Please support my return to work asap.”

Return to work.

That has always been the goal.

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By March 2022, I was also trying to secure my home loan and provide proof of employment to a mortgage broker while simultaneously fighting to have my employment rights recognised.  

I wrote:

“I need the … injury management plan agreement never implemented by [specialised insurer] and employer.”  

The plan already existed.

The obligation already existed.

The laws already existed.

What did not exist was enforcement.

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The most confronting part of this email is the exhaustion.

It is the language of someone being psychologically crushed by institutional indifference:

“I’m not coping with negligence anymore.”  

“I’m suffocating from cruelty and negligence.”  

“When are they thinking of finally contacting my nominated treating doctor… When I’m dead?”  

Those words reflected the reality of prolonged non-compliance, isolation, and systemic failure while I remained without proper injury management coordination, without meaningful return-to-work support, and without the statutory protections workers are supposed to rely upon.

⸻

What also stands out now is that I was still trying to protect the institution.

I wrote:

“They are not going to want these people in WHS or what they did to us, become public.”  

Even then, I believed the university’s leadership — particularly its mission and ethics leadership — would intervene once they understood the seriousness of what was occurring.

Instead, the notices continued.

Email after email.

Warning after warning.

Plea after plea.

No meaningful intervention came.

⸻

At the bottom of the email chain, I referenced the newly elected Member for Strathfield because my university campus was located there. I was desperately trying to find someone who would help ensure lawful injury management occurred.  

I even referenced the growing scrutiny surrounding workers’ compensation systems and enforcement failures.

I understood something important long before many others did:

When regulators fail to enforce the law, harm escalates.

And when institutions know a worker is deteriorating but continue delaying action, the risk becomes foreseeable.

⸻

The Legal Reality

Under NSW workers’ compensation and WHS legislation, employers and insurers are not permitted to simply abandon injury management obligations while a worker deteriorates psychologically and financially.

This includes obligations relating to:

• coordination with nominated treating practitioners,
• implementation of injury management planning,
• return-to-work support,
• psychological safety,
• and prevention of further harm.

These duties do not disappear because a worker becomes distressed by prolonged mistreatment.

In fact, that is precisely when compliance matters most.

⸻

The Pattern

This email was part of a documented chronology of repeated notifications sent to:

• governance,
• ethics leadership,
• WHS personnel,
• insurer representatives,
• regulators,
• and elected officials.

The pattern is now undeniable:

1. Serious concerns were repeatedly raised.
2. Distress and foreseeable harm were clearly communicated.
3. Legal obligations were repeatedly referenced.
4. Delay and inaction continued.

Institutions are not judged only by their public values statements.

They are judged by what they do after they are put on notice.

And by March 2022, everyone relevant had been put on notice.

⸻

And the institutionalised wage theft continued…

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 293.