When Dignity Becomes the Question - September 2022

9–23 September 2022

There are moments in a long struggle when separate parts of a story suddenly converge: family, work, faith, culture, grief, mental health, justice and the question of whether the values an institution publicly professes are actually lived when somebody is suffering.

September 2022 was one of those moments for me.

Two emails I wrote that month were separated by only two weeks. Reading them together now, I can see the same question running through both:

What does human dignity mean if it disappears precisely when a person most needs it?

——

9 September 2022: In memory of the Queen and my parents’ citizenship, loyalty and contribution to Australia

On 9 September 2022, the morning after the death of Queen Elizabeth II was announced, I wrote to Professor Hayden Ramsay at ACU.

This wasn’t really an email about monarchy.

It was about my parents.

It was about migration, sacrifice, loyalty, service, education, faith and filotimo — the deeply held Greek value that encompasses honour, dignity, generosity, responsibility and doing what’s right because it’s right.

I asked ACU to recognise what its treatment of me had also meant for my family:

“I really need ACU to show respect to my parents, their sacrifices, hard work, loyalty, filotimo and contribution to our country.”

I spoke of my parents’ service to Australia and their belief in education - educating their children so that we could use the gifts we had been given and contribute to society.

And I connected that history directly to what I was asking of my university: dignity, restoration and the return of what had been taken from me after approximately twenty years of honourable service.

My request was explicit. I sought reinstatement and continuity and the restoration of what I was entitled to, consistent with the mission, values and ethos I had served.

——

Why the Queen’s death brought this to the surface

The longer material accompanying that email explains why the events of 8–9 September 2022 resonated so strongly.

I shared a story from the Hellenic Genealogy Geek Facebook community about a Greek migrant who had arrived in Australia in 1960. He treasured the booklet he received upon naturalisation as an Australian citizen and British subject. He kept it carefully wrapped in plastic until his death in 2014 and showed it to his grandchildren.

The point of that story wasn’t a political argument about republicanism or monarchy.

It was what the booklet represented to a young migrant who had come from poverty, war and hardship: welcome, opportunity, belonging and dignity.

Another child of Greek migrants responded that her own father had kept the same booklet among his treasured possessions. She remembered her parents as:

“honourable hardworking and respectful people”

who instilled filotimo and respect in their children.

The original writer replied:

“Φιλότιμο and respect… they seem to be fading away… Let’s all try to maintain these values…”

That exchange affected me because I knew exactly what they meant.

That was my father. That is my mother.

And so I asked Professor Ramsay:

“Will ACU leaders and colleagues start to repair the trust I had so willingly given for twenty years?”

This wasn’t an abstract philosophical question. I was asking whether dignity, respect, trust, integrity and filotimo could be demonstrated through action - including supporting my recovery and my return to work as per statutory obligations require.

I ended with two questions for a professor of ethics:

“What is the truth?”

and:

“What defines courage?”

——

The contradiction I was trying to expose

The accompanying letter went much further.

I wrote about gaslighting, mobbing, fear and the continuing psychological consequences of what had happened. I said that supporting my recovery and implementing the injury management plan would bring an end to the fear and risks to my safety and wellbeing.

To me, this was a test of ACU’s Catholic identity.

I wrote that supporting recovery would:

“support the mission, values and Catholic ethos of the university.”

And:

“It demonstrates the university’s integrity.”

That remains important.

——

Values are not demonstrated by publishing them. They are demonstrated by what an institution does when applying them is difficult.

What are our values worth when keeping them costs us something?

——

The Justice and Peace Office

Later that same morning, on 9 September 2022, I forwarded the material to the Justice and Peace Office.

I did so deliberately.

I told them that what was happening was relevant to their commitment to social justice because the injustice I was describing was occurring within an institution of the Catholic Church.

By then, my distrust of regulatory systems had become profound. I wrote that I had received a letter from the Fair Work Ombudsman but was frightened even to open it because previous regulatory experiences had become triggers for trauma.

That detail says something about how far things had deteriorated.

A letter arriving in the mail shouldn’t have been frightening.

Yet I was contemplating travelling to my federal MP’s office in Kogarah simply so that I wouldn’t have to open the envelope alone.

I wrote:

“I’m alone, frightened and vulnerable.”

And yet I was still looking for an institution - somewhere - that would demonstrate that systems of accountability could work.

I described the Fair Work Ombudsman at that point as my “last hope of restoring trust and integrity in the government system.” *

I ended that message with words that capture much of what I had been trying to communicate:

“Hypocrisy needs to be replaced by integrity.”

* The Fair Work Ombudsman failed to restore trust and integrity in the government system - see http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-fair-work-ombudsman-when-another.html

——

Twelve hours after my father’s death

The email then returned to one of the most painful experiences of my life.

I wrote about my father’s suicide and what occurred approximately 12 hours after his death.

I described my manager coming into my family home and approaching my mother about when I would return to work because it was a busy time of year and everybody was needed.

Three days?

A week?

My father had just died.

My family had barely begun to comprehend what had happened, let alone organise his funeral.

That memory sat behind my question in September 2022:

“Am I an exception for a support network from my university community?”

And then:

“I expect to return and recover in my job as a matter of principle, respect and dignity to the human person.”

I was not an exception to dignity.

“I’m not an exception to ACU’s identity and mission, nor the laws in our society.”

——

“Do we act on what we preach or not?”

My email of 23 September 2022 contained a question:

“Do we act on what we preach or not?”

That’s the thread running from 9 September to 23 September.

It connects my parents’ migration story with my father’s death.

It connects filotimo with Catholic social teaching.

It connects workplace health and safety with human dignity.

It connects institutional mission statements with the actual treatment of a human being.

And it connects ethics with courage.

I was asking people within a Catholic university and within Catholic social-justice structures not merely to sympathise with what I was saying, but to act consistently with the principles their institutions professed.

By 23 September 2022, I was exhausted. I wrote that I needed to pause from what I called a “battle of social injustice” because the continuing workplace situation had taken its toll.

But even then, I remained clear about what I wanted:

to return and recover in my job.

Because it was a legal obligation and dignity in the university mission should mean something.

——

The question remains

What strikes me is how many times I tried to communicate the same fundamental message through different languages.

Sometimes I spoke in the language of workplace health and safety.

Sometimes workers compensation.

Sometimes ethics.

Sometimes Catholic identity and mission.

Sometimes social justice.

Sometimes family.

Sometimes grief.

And sometimes through the Greek word that perhaps says it most simply:

Filotimo.

On 9 September 2022, I asked:

“What is the truth?”

I also asked:

“What defines courage?”

On 23 September 2022, I asked:

“Do we act on what we preach or not?”

Those are not three separate questions.

They are different versions of the same one.

When an institution speaks publicly about dignity, justice, ethics, compassion and the value of the human person, what happens when living those principles requires it to confront what has happened within its own community?

That’s when values cease to be words.

That’s when they are tested.

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 473, 482