The Fair Work Ombudsman - When another Regulator Shut the Door - August 2022

30 August 2022

On 3 August 2022, I was still trying.

I was still trying to find somebody within the system who would listen to what I was actually saying, understand the seriousness of what was happening, and do something other than point me towards another organisation, another process, another lawyer, another commission or another door.

My correspondence to the Fair Work Ombudsman from this period wasn’t an ordinary workplace enquiry.

It couldn’t reasonably have been read that way.

I explained that I was traumatised. I explained that communications from government agencies themselves had become triggers because of what had already happened when I sought help. I explained why I was frightened of opening emails, answering telephone calls and logging into government portals.

I actually wrote:

“I’m imprisoned in this trauma and fear from repeated government deception and negligence of core responsibilities, to date.”

I explained that I needed communication to occur in a way that took account of that trauma. I repeatedly asked for intervention. I repeatedly asked for the psychological and financial harm to stop. I asked for the isolation and ostracism to stop. I asked for my leave entitlements to be restored. I asked for continuity in my work and the opportunity to recover safely in my job.

I wasn’t hiding the state I was in.

I could hardly have communicated it more plainly.

——

What was happening outside those letters

The records attached to that correspondence also capture something important that can easily disappear when a human life is reduced to an enquiry number.

At the same time that I was trying to obtain assistance from the Fair Work Ombudsman, I was dealing with the financial consequences unfolding around me.

On 1 August 2022, my solicitor was trying urgently to coordinate the settlement of the sale of my Melbourne property with the purchase of my home in Sydney. The correspondence records the urgency surrounding the simultaneous interstate settlements and the uncertainty about the funds required for settlement.

My own email that day said:

“I’m in the process of resolving a serious issue with the support of the Fair Work Ombudsman.”

That hurts me to read.

I genuinely believed that reaching the appropriate federal regulator might finally mean that somebody with authority would look at what was happening.

I was trying to hold together my home, my finances, my employment, my health and my future at the same time.

And I was communicating the connection between them.

I told the Fair Work Ombudsman that I had sold my investment property. I explained the financial losses I was suffering. I explained the effect upon my superannuation and another property transaction. I explained that I needed to return to work so that I could pay my mortgage and bills and stop the continuing financial damage.

Whatever view ultimately might have been taken about jurisdiction, remedies or the merits of particular allegations, there could have been no ambiguity about the human distress being communicated.

——

Then came the letter

On 30 August 2022, the Fair Work Ombudsman wrote to me.

It was a remarkably short letter.

It stated:

“I write to inform you again that the Fair Work Ombudsman is unable to assist you with your enquiry in relation to your complaint against Australian Catholic University and the NTEU.”

It then said:

“As this has been our consistent response to your enquiries, I wish to inform that no further responses will be provided on this matter.”

The letter directed me to the Fair Work Ombudsman’s website if I wanted the decision reviewed or wished to provide feedback.

And that was essentially it.

I had written pages trying to explain why government emails and portals had themselves become frightening to me.

The response directed me back to a website.

I had explained that I was alone.

I had explained that I was frightened.

I had explained why I was struggling even to receive communications from government agencies.

I had provided an alternative contact.

I had explained the financial crisis occurring alongside the workplace crisis.

I had repeatedly asked for somebody to intervene before still more harm occurred.

The response was that no further responses would be provided.

——

I could not even open it

There’s another part of this record that matters.

The letter is dated 30 August 2022, but that doesn’t mean that I read it on 30 August 2022.

I didn’t.

By then, I had gone into self-preservation.

I was so frightened of what another government agency was going to say to me that I held onto the unopened letter. Even an envelope from an authority had become something I feared.

It wasn’t until around January 2023 that I finally opened it, with a friend supporting me over the telephone.

That’s what institutional trauma looked like for me by then.

It wasn’t simply disappointment with a decision.

I was afraid to open the mail.

And what made that even more isolating was that I didn’t feel that I had an elected representative I could safely turn to for help. I had previously approached the offices of both state and federal representatives. I didn’t experience the advocacy or human support I needed.

In fact, I had followed advice from staff at the federal electorate office by communicating with the Fair Work Ombudsman.

But when that avenue failed, where was I supposed to go next?

There comes a point where continually telling a distressed person to go somewhere else stops being meaningful assistance when every place they are sent simply sends them somewhere else again.

I had become the person carrying the entire burden of navigating the gaps between systems while already traumatised by those systems.

——

And then I discovered something else

There’s another aspect of the 30 August letter that I subsequently identified in my records, and it raises questions that need to be pursued separately.

The letter was signed simply by “Mitch”, with the title:

Assistant Director

Customer Service Delivery Southern

Fair Work Ombudsman.

The letter itself doesn’t identify the signatory as acting in that position, when in fact, they were “acting” in that role at that time. The substantive role was team leader. 

Much later, when I researched the person who had written to me, I found employment-history information which, according to the record I captured, indicated that he had previously worked as a Claims Specialist at Catholic Church Insurance.

Catholic Church Insurance wasn’t some unrelated organisation in the history I had placed before the Fair Work Ombudsman.

It was the workers compensation insurer whose conduct formed part of the interconnected circumstances I had been documenting.

That discovery therefore disturbed me enormously.

I want to be precise about what I’m saying.

I am not claiming that previous employment, by itself, proves that the Fair Work Ombudsman’s decision was improper.

I’m saying that it raises legitimate questions that I didn’t even know I needed to ask in August 2022.

• Was the Fair Work Ombudsman aware of that previous employment?

• Was any potential, perceived or actual conflict of interest identified?

• Was it assessed?

• Was it considered appropriate for this particular officer to participate in handling or responding to a matter in which Catholic Church Insurance featured substantially in the history and allegations being communicated?

• Was any conflict-management process undertaken?

• And if so, why was nothing disclosed to me?

Those are questions.

They deserve answers.

——

I had no opportunity to consider any of this

That’s what troubles me particularly when I look backwards.

I didn’t know.

I was receiving correspondence from a Commonwealth regulator and naturally understood the person signing it to be acting solely in his capacity within that regulator.

Nothing in the letter alerted me to a previous professional connection with one of the organisations whose misconduct formed part of the history I had been describing.

I therefore had no opportunity at the time to identify the issue, ask questions about it, raise an objection or seek reassurance that appropriate conflict-of-interest procedures had been followed.

And I was in no psychological condition to start investigating the employment histories of government officers anyway.

I was trying to survive.

——

Read my words again

That’s why I think the contemporaneous documents matter so much.

They remove hindsight.

They show what I was saying then.

In August 2022, I was telling the Fair Work Ombudsman:

“I’m alone with no support. I’m frightened.”

I wrote:

“MAKE THE FINANCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL ABUSE STOP.”

And elsewhere:

“I’m really frightened and I need to be respected and treated with dignity by ACU, through listening with empathy, regarding what I need to recover.”

Those weren’t words reconstructed years afterwards.

They were written while it was happening.

Then, on 30 August, came the institutional answer:

“no further responses will be provided on this matter.”

There’s something profoundly wrong with a system in which a person can communicate that degree of fear, isolation, financial harm and psychological distress across pages of correspondence and ultimately receive a letter closing the door.

And now there’s another question sitting alongside it.

If the officer who signed that letter had previously worked for Catholic Church Insurance, as the employment record I subsequently located indicates, what conflict-of-interest safeguards were applied?

I don’t think that’s an unreasonable question.

I think it’s an essential one.

Because public confidence in regulators depends not merely upon officials being impartial. It also depends upon transparent processes for recognising and managing circumstances capable of creating a reasonable perception that impartiality could be affected.

I had already lost trust in so many institutions by August 2022.

I shouldn’t also have had to wonder whether the person closing another regulatory door had an undisclosed professional connection to one of the organisations caught up in the very events I was asking government to examine.

That part of the story deserves scrutiny.

And I will return to it.

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 464-465.