Fair and Dignified Working Conditions: My November 2022 Pleas to the Catholic Church

 “All I asked for was a safe work environment to keep my health and dignity intact.”

On 10, 11 and 21 November 2022, I wrote again to the Catholic Church’s Justice and Peace Office, seeking help to stop the harm I was reporting at ACU.

These emails document the snowball effect I have described throughout this series: workplace harm, adverse action, withheld workers’ compensation payments and benefits, stolen leave entitlements, and a financial crisis that had reached my superannuation.

By 21 November 2022, I was writing about having to forfeit a $30,000 deposit on an investment property intended for my self-managed superannuation fund.

I was asking for intervention before even more of what I had worked for was destroyed.

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10 November 2022: “Please understand my trauma”

On 10 November 2022, I was frightened and cautious about communications after years of trying to obtain protection. I wrote:

“Please understand my trauma.”

That evening, I was on my way to a general meeting at a Catholic Church parish, where, as I wrote, I felt:

“accepted, included and safe”

Those words described the safety and belonging I had been seeking while reporting harm within a Catholic university that publicly professes respect for human dignity.

What this email records is that I was asking for the seriousness of my concerns to be understood.

I described the shock of people failing to act:

“No one believed how serious or colluded … or just did nothing, which is the biggest trauma and shock of all.”

The distress wasn’t only about the employer conduct. It was also about reporting it repeatedly and still being left without effective protection. 

The distress was caused by the abandonment! 

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11 November 2022: An insurer could restore church pews—where was my recovery support?

On 11 November 2022, I wrote again and described something I had heard at the parish meeting. According to my email, the parish financial report included $50,000 provided by Catholic Church Insurance (CCI) to restore pews damaged in connection with COVID arrangements.

I acknowledged that this claim had rightly been processed and the damage covered.

But hearing that report was deeply distressing in the context of my own experience with the same insurer.

In the email, I said that workers’ compensation payments had been withheld while I exhausted annual and long service leave to sustain an income. I also reported that:

• The case manager who had obtained an Injury Management Plan was no longer there to support my claim and CCI hadn’t provided a replacement case manager
• My treating health professionals hadn’t been contacted by the employer or insurer.
• Recommendations intended to support recovery and return to work hadn’t been implemented.
• Confidential documents had been shared without my permission.
• Conduct associated with the cause of my injury had continued.

These were serious allegations requiring investigation. I was describing what I considered workers’ compensation fraud and asking for the records to be examined.

My complaint was that payments and benefits under the statutory scheme had been withheld, forcing me to consume accrued entitlements and other resources to survive.

“The financial damage has been horrific. But I’m begging the Catholic Church to stop the abuse.”

I also called for safeguards extending beyond my individual circumstances:

“Compliance measures to protect employees in Catholic Church organisations must happen including audits.”

Fair and dignified working conditions needed to be demonstrated through action.

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What I asked ACU governance to answer

In the 11 November 2022 email, I described my attempts to bring the misconduct to ACU governance.

I questioned the failure to follow policies and respectful, transparent complaints-handling processes. I also referred to communications with the Deputy Vice-Chancellor responsible for ethics, whose portfolio, I explained, included the library directorate and my work.

My question was direct: how could the conduct I was reporting be reconciled with the university’s identity and mission?

“If this gross negligence and denial of my human rights continues anymore, they will have to explain how this aligns to the identity and mission to the media.”

The emails also described the impact on my family, including letters sent to them “on behalf of the university”, which I experienced as offensive and intimidating.

I wrote about my parents’ sacrifices, the education they had helped make possible, and the values of dignity, responsibility and service with which I had been raised.

The harm reached beyond me. It affected my family and the life we had worked to build.

My request remained to recover in my job:

“It’s a matter of respect, dignity and my human right … to recover in my job.”

And I identified where leadership accountability lay:

“The buck stops with the VC and President. He must be held accountable to act and comply with policies, laws and regulations. Now.”

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The recovery message attached to my appeal

The 11 November 2022 document also contains a workplace injury information poster identifying CCI as the employer’s workers’ compensation insurer and a university return-to-work contact.

Its instructions included:

“Tell your employer”

“See your doctor”

“Recover at work”

It stated:

“If you are able, stay at work or plan how to return to suitable work as early as possible.”

It also acknowledged that being away from work can affect health, wellbeing, financial circumstances and relationships with family and friends.

Those were precisely the consequences I was reporting.

The recovery message existed on paper. My correspondence asked why the practical cooperation needed to make it meaningful hadn’t followed.

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21 November 2022: The crisis had reached my superannuation

On 21 November 2022, I sent another email, titled:

“Fair and Dignified Working Conditions | Justice and Peace Office”

Its opening recorded the immediate financial crisis:

“Tomorrow I have to put in writing to the vendor’s solicitor that I can’t proceed with the investment property in my superannuation trust and I forfeit the $30,000 deposit.”

I explained that I had originally held sufficient funds to purchase the property outright. According to my account, I had needed to draw on those resources to preserve the home I lived in.

“I have to tell my conveyancer tomorrow too. She still thinks I’m good to go.”

This email records the anticipated forfeiture and the steps I expected to take. It shows how far the crisis had progressed by that date.

The snowball effect had reached assets intended to support my retirement. The threatened loss included both the deposit and the opportunity to receive rental income into my superannuation fund.

I again asked for accountability:

“Can people with some moral fibre within them please hold governance accountable and make the abuse stop.”

I also asked for my accrued entitlements to be restored and for CCI to comply with workers’ compensation requirements.

“I finally need a break before I finally break.”

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A plea for action, dignity and recovery

Across these three emails, I was asking for protection, cooperation and a safe path to recover in my job.

I was also asking the Catholic Church to confront the gap between its public commitments to fair and dignified working conditions and the conduct I was reporting within a Catholic university and its specialised insurer.

The correspondence records contact from the recipient. It doesn’t establish what intervention followed. But it does establish what I communicated: serious allegations, escalating financial consequences, profound distress, and repeated requests for help.

By 21 November 2022, those requests had become urgent warnings about the destruction of my retirement plans.

The final plea in that email was simple:

“Please can someone make this abuse stop now.”

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 565-566.