By January 2022, I was exhausted from trying to communicate with regulators who were supposed to ensure compliance with the workers compensation laws of New South Wales, not contribute to the harm.
I had already spent months documenting what had happened to me.
I had repeatedly explained that there was a legally agreed Injury Management Plan that had never been implemented.
I had explained that my attempts to return to work had failed because the employer and the insurer were not complying with their statutory obligations.
I had explained the financial harm, the deterioration of my health, the collapse of safety, the intimidation, the abandonment, and the complete lack of meaningful intervention from the very bodies the public are told exist to protect workers.
And still, the responses kept coming back in the same cold administrative language.
Processed. Closed. Finalised.
Not resolved.
Finalised.
⸻
6 January 2022 — The Questions I Asked SIRA
On 6 January 2022, I wrote directly to a Senior Complaints Advisor at NSW State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA NSW).
I asked two direct questions:
- Why do you not take complaints seriously and deceive and abuse your customers?
- What is the email address of Adam Dent, CEO of SIRA?
Those questions came after repeated attempts to obtain help regarding:
- a legally binding Injury Management Plan that had not been implemented
- withheld entitlements
- failure of return-to-work obligations
- ongoing harm from workplace conduct
- and what I believed was complete regulatory indifference to clear statutory non-compliance
I made it clear in that email that the distress I was experiencing was not simply because of what had happened at work.
It was because of what happened afterwards.
It was because of the conduct of the regulators.
It was because of what happens when the bodies meant to stop harm instead become part of the harm itself.
⸻
14 January 2022 — SIRA’s Response
On 14 January 2022, the response arrived from the Senior Complaints Manager.
And buried within that response is a sentence that has stayed with me ever since:
“We do take complaints seriously…”
 |
“Finalised. Not resolved. A closed case file that documents a complaint—but not accountability.” |
That sentence needs to be read carefully.
Because by the time it was written, I had already repeatedly raised concerns regarding:
- a legally agreed Injury Management Plan not being implemented
- a specialised insurer — Catholic Church Insurance — allegedly failing to comply with statutory obligations
- the withholding of entitlements
- failed return-to-work coordination
- and the absence of meaningful regulatory enforcement
Yet the response I received was not one focused on enforcement.
It was focused on administrative closure.
⸻
“We Consider Your Complaint Finalised”
The same response also stated:
“We do consider your complaint finalised.”
There is a difference between:
- resolving a problem
and
- closing a file.
The complaint may have been administratively finalised, but the issues themselves were not resolved.
The Injury Management Plan still had not been implemented.
The return-to-work failures still existed.
The financial harm continued.
The psychological harm continued.
And the regulator responsible for oversight was effectively telling me the matter was over.
⸻
The Questions That Were Never Properly Answered
What I kept trying to understand was simple:
How could a regulator responsible for oversight of the workers compensation scheme say it took complaints seriously while simultaneously failing to meaningfully intervene in circumstances involving alleged non-compliance with injury management obligations?
How could repeated complaints result in closure without enforcement?
How could the system continue treating a worker in distress as the problem to be managed rather than examining the conduct being reported?
Those questions were never genuinely answered.
Instead, the responses increasingly became about process management.
Referral pathways.
Complaint handling mechanisms.
The NSW Ombudsman.
Customer complaints.
Everything except the underlying conduct itself.
⸻
The Gap Between Public Statements and Reality
That sentence —
“We do take complaints seriously”
— now sits in the record beside years of evidence showing what actually happened afterwards.
No meaningful enforcement.
No restoration of safety.
No implementation of the agreed Injury Management Plan.
No coordinated pathway back to work.
No meaningful accountability for the conduct being raised.
And this is why documentation matters.
Because over time, the contrast between institutional language and lived reality becomes impossible to ignore.
⸻
Legal Accountability — Regulatory Function vs Conduct
Under the workers compensation framework in New South Wales, State Insurance Regulatory Authority has regulatory oversight responsibilities.
Those responsibilities include oversight of insurer conduct, including specialised insurers such as Catholic Church Insurance, as well as obligations connected to injury management and return-to-work processes under the Workplace Injury Management and Workers Compensation Act 1998 (NSW).
The concerns I was repeatedly raising involved:
- implementation failures regarding an agreed Injury Management Plan
- alleged failures in return-to-work coordination
- ongoing withholding of entitlements
- and broader concerns about regulatory inaction
Yet the response trajectory became increasingly focused on administrative finalisation rather than substantive intervention.
⸻
The Human Reality Behind These Records
By January 2022, I had reached the point where engaging with these responses itself had become distressing.
On 21 January 2022, I wrote that I could no longer safely read some of the responses myself because of the impact the ongoing process was having on me psychologically.
That is the human reality sitting behind phrases like:
“We take complaints seriously.”
And that is why these records matter now.
They demonstrate the distance between what was said and what was done.
⸻
Final Reflection
Years later, what stands out to me most is not the bureaucratic wording itself.
It is the contradiction.
A regulator saying complaints are taken seriously while a worker continued to deteriorate under the weight of unresolved statutory failures, financial harm, procedural failures, and institutional abandonment.
That contradiction is now part of the documented record.
And documentation has a way of telling the truth long after institutions stop listening.
And the institutionalised wage theft continued…
Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 246, 247 and 249.
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