Writing this post, I had to stop and take some deep breaths. Revisiting the correspondence brought back distress that I hadn’t fully recognised as part of my experience with the Independent Review Office.
I’ve spoken extensively about the harm I experienced through SafeWork NSW, SIRA and the Personal Injury Commission. But I hadn’t given the continuing distress caused by my contact with IRO the same attention. Reading these exchanges again, I began to recognise how much those responses—and the effort of repeatedly trying to explain myself—had affected me.
I approached IRO for help. Revisiting what followed has been painful. Behind every email was a person already struggling, trying to understand the answers and asking for practical assistance. That person was me, and I’m still feeling the impact as I write.
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Catholic Church Insurance and the Independent Review Office: December 2022
My mother had lost her sister. I had lost my aunt. We had a funeral on 15 December 2022, and grief to carry afterwards.
Around that time, we also suddenly and tragically lost Charlotte, our beautiful cat, at our family home. People who love animals understand: she was family. In a world that had become frightening and cruel, that companionship mattered. Losing her was another devastating loss when we were already overwhelmed.
Yet even then, I couldn’t simply grieve.
There was another insurer call to clarify. Another complaint to follow up. Another explanation to write. Another government office asking questions while the help I needed remained out of reach.
The insurer was Catholic Church Insurance. The complaints body was the Independent Review Office—IRO.
Those names deserve to be written in full. Behind them were people making decisions about how to respond to an injured worker who was telling them she was traumatised, frightened and exhausted.
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9–12 December: please put the purpose of the call in writing
On Friday 9 December 2022, at approximately midday, I received a call from someone at Catholic Church Insurance identified as “Sandy”.
At 4pm that day, I called to request initial contact in writing. I wanted to understand who was contacting me and why. I didn’t trust them and I was fearful of more harm.
On Monday morning, 12 December, I submitted an enquiry and complaint to IRO, seeking help to obtain that explanation.
This was a small, practical request. Catholic Church Insurance had become a trigger of compounded trauma for me. Written contact would give me time to understand what was being said. It was also extremely important to preserve the record.
I was trying, in some way, to make communication manageable, accountable and safe, so I could engage with it.
The wider purpose remained the same: implementation of my Injury Management Plan and support to recover safely in my job.
——
A closure deadline on the day of my aunt’s funeral
IRO sent questions on 13 December to the other email account on its file, rather than the address I had supplied in my complaint.
On 14 December, IRO sent a follow-up to that same account:
“Could you please provide a response by close of business 15/12/2022 or I will close this complaint without further action.”
Such sensitivity and compassion for what IRO had already put me through.
——
15 December was the day of my aunt’s funeral.
The correspondence doesn’t establish that IRO knew about the funeral when it imposed that deadline. But it establishes something deeply significant: its questions and closure warning went to an account I was avoiding because it became a trauma trigger (caused mostly by the regulators themselves), and despite my having supplied another address.
I was becoming more imprisoned and trapped in fear because of the government regulators.
While our family was arranging a funeral and grieving, a deadline was running in an inbox I had tried to avoid for reasons connected to my trauma*.
That’s what administrative handling can mean in a person’s actual life.
See:
Email address created strictly for Return to Work communication - July 2020
*Ironically it was the email address that I created strictly for return to work communication that was used by HR staff and unethical lawyers to harass and intimidate, and then SafeWork, SIRA and IRO caused secondary trauma that finally had me remove (not delete) the account from my mobile devices for my emotional safety.
——
19 December: explaining the trauma again
On 19 December, I called IRO to follow up.
My written account explained that I had supplied a different response address. It also recorded that I again insisted the Injury Management Plan be implemented.
IRO acknowledged the email error:
“My apologies I used the email address on file instead of the new one provided in the web complaint.”
IRO said it had updated its system.
That acknowledgement matters. So does the impact of what had already happened.
I explained why the email account mattered. It had originally been set up for the people who were supposed to coordinate injury management and return to work. Instead, I associated it with the conduct I had reported, the failure to protect me, and the harm that followed.
I wrote:
“I have compounded trauma due to SIRA’s lack of integrity and regulation and I have valid reasons not to trust the worker’s compensation scheme.”
That was my lived experience. The account had become tied to fear.
I also explained that I would have a friend review the response for me. Even reading correspondence from the system required support.
My note that morning recorded the family circumstances:
“My delay in following up was because my mum’s sister, my aunt, passed away and we had funeral arrangements, a funeral on Thursday 15th December 2022, and grief to process.”
Why was an injured, bereaved person having to work so hard to secure a simple written explanation?
——
21 December: I answered and supplied the records
On 21 December, I responded to IRO’s questions.
My email began:
“My apologies my aunt died and we had the funeral on Thursday. Hence why I couldn’t reply sooner or check my email for a response.”
Reading that now, I’m struck by the fact that I apologised.
I was grieving. My mother was grieving. Our family was overwhelmed. Yet I felt compelled to apologise for not responding sooner to a complaints process that had itself used the wrong address.
I gave the times: Catholic Church Insurance’s call at midday on 9 December, and my request for initial contact in writing at 4pm.
I also explained that the concerns extended far beyond this one call:
“They have not complied with worker’s compensation regulations since approximately two months after I made the claim, around August 2020.”
That was what I was asking the system to address.
I supplied a timeline and attached three reports concerning extensive adverse action.
I told IRO that records had gone to the Fair Work Ombudsman, and that I was seeking a meeting with St. George PAC. I reported that SIRA had returned my records without investigating.
These were the lengths I was going to because I still needed someone to listen, examine the evidence and stop the harm.
Compiling hundreds of documents was unpaid work imposed on an injured, systemically abused and traumatised person trying to secure help. It consumed the time and energy I needed for recovery, family and grief.
——
23 December: “without further action”
On 23 December, IRO replied that the officer had reviewed my email with her director.
It said there were occasions when the insurer needed to contact me, and that unless I could provide evidence of a communication plan agreed to by the insurer, it could not take the matter further.
Its closing sentence was:
“At this stage we will file your email without further action.”
I had asked for help obtaining the purpose of a call in writing. I had explained the trauma. I had supplied the timing and records.
The response placed another requirement on me: demonstrate an insurer-agreed communication plan before IRO would proceed.
NO SUCH INSURER-AGREED COMMUNICATION PLAN EXISTED. AN INJURY MANAGEMENT PLAN EXISTS BUT WAS NEVER IMPLEMENTED BY THE INSURER!
I tried to communicate with CCI! I told them I expected their cooperation! They have repeatedly provided IRO with false statements and IRO just accepted CCI’s false statements without any INDEPENDENT VERIFICATION.
THAT WAS NEVER MY RESPONSIBILITY TO CARRY FOR YEARS.
See:
Catholic Church Insurance - October 2020
Deception from CCI - October 2020
I didn’t understand what “communication plan” IRO was talking about. I had asked for the purpose of Catholic Church Insurance’s call to be put in writing. Now I was being asked to produce evidence of an agreement with the very insurer I had approached IRO for help dealing with.
In my response on 23 December 2022, I wrote:
“Your reply about a ‘communication plan the insurer has agreed to’ is more government hogwash that makes no sense and could potentially have left me open to more fraud and abuse.”
That was my confusion and fear expressed plainly. I needed someone to explain what they meant and help me obtain a clear response. Instead, I was left trying to interpret another requirement while already traumatised!
Where did that leave a worker seeking help precisely because the insurer’s manipulative, fabricated and misleading communication, even to the regulators, had become frightening and difficult to manage?
What practical protection did the Independent Review Office provide me that morning?
This is why I regard my experience with IRO as a complete waste of public resources. Staff and a director had considered the correspondence, but the outcome left me to obtain the explanation myself.
“Without further action” may finish an administrative task, and in the most cruel and inhumane manner. It doesn’t finish the distress experienced by the person seeking help.
——
Shaking, I called Catholic Church Insurance myself
In my further response on 23 December, I described what happened next:
“Shaken up with a spike in blood pressure, I was forced to call CCI on my own.”
The customer service representative was kind. I recorded that she could hear my trauma.
That kindness mattered. In the middle of institutional indifference, an ordinary human response made a difference.
I was told the case manager had wanted to introduce herself. I wrote:
“I hope that’s the case and also that my case is reopened for actual compliance to finally take place.”
A straightforward explanation could have reduced the uncertainty much earlier.
Instead, I had reached the point of shaking and reporting a spike in blood pressure before obtaining it myself.
I told IRO:
“How easy it could have been for me if you had done this simple task.”
And:
“The biggest indignity to a human person is no one listening and validating their experience.”
That sentence remains at the heart of this account.
——
28 December: three questions Catholic Church Insurance still needed to answer
On 28 December 2022, I wrote to Catholic Church Insurance and asked:
- “Is Sandy a case manager the way Jessica was?”
- “Has Sandy been briefed on what has happened so she understands why CCI has become a trigger of compounded trauma for me?”
- “Is CCI finally going to cooperate to implement the injury management plan agreement attached?”
I attached the plan.
Between Christmas and New Year, while our family was still carrying its grief, I was asking again for clarity about responsibility, an informed person who understood the history, and action on the Injury Management Plan.
The accompanying automated response described reduced staffing between 28 December 2022 and 3 January 2023, listed public holiday closures, and ended:
“CCI wish all our clientele Happy Holidays and all the best in the year to come!”
For me, those words landed beside grief, fear and unanswered questions. It was actually sickening given the serious corporate misconduct of CCI.
——
My humanity should have mattered
The cruelty I experienced was cumulative.
It was having to explain the trauma repeatedly. Having to disclose bereavement to account for a delayed reply. Having to ask for communication I could safely read. Having to assemble evidence while the obligations I was asking to have addressed remained unresolved.
It was discovering how many people could participate in that process, each handling one small piece, while the whole experience became unbearable for the person at its centre.
That has damaged my faith in humanity.
Catholic Church Insurance’s name makes the experience especially painful. The language of faith, compassion and dignity should mean something when an injured person asks for help.
The same question applies to ACU’s commitment to the dignity of the human person. That commitment must reach the worker seeking to recover in her job, and the family affected by what has happened to her.
My mother had lost a sister. I had lost an aunt. We had lost Charlotte.
We needed room to grieve. I needed care, clarity and practical support.
Instead, I felt trapped in an endless obligation to document, explain and pursue the people whose decisions were affecting my health and future. All the while, the other powerful key stakeholders, including the government regulators, refused to meet their own obligations that was their core responsibility.
——
The year I needed to recover
As December 2022 ended, I needed 2023 to be a year of healing, recovery and accountability.
My objective remained continuity in my HEW 8, Step 4 role at ACU’s Strathfield campus library, with safe arrangements and implementation of the Injury Management Plan. I hadn’t resigned. I expect my statutory right to recover in my job and for this institutional abuse and fraud to finally be stopped.
URGENTLY REVIEW the indexed chronology dataset I provided NSW DEPARTMENT OF CUSTOMER SERVICE! And the adjoining records I provided access to! There lies the truth of what happened and how an employer and its specialised insurer successfully undermined a statutory scheme! I should never have had to prove fitness to do my job I’ve been doing successfully for over twenty years, like this! I cannot survive this cruel systemic abuse much longer!
I also needed the financial harm and outstanding entitlements addressed. Income protection through TAL didn’t answer the concerns I was raising about Catholic Church Insurance, ACU or the workers’ compensation process.
The next part of this account concerns January 2023 and the explanation I later received about the time available to implement the plan. That deserves its own examination.
Here, at the end of this December sequence, the question is painfully simple:
How much more must an injured person endure before the people paid with our public money, recognise her humanity, take over and act?
I was still asking for help.
I was still asking to recover.
And the Independent Review Office had filed my email “without further action”.
Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 582-583, 586.
——
Where was IRO’s accountability?
IRO had statutory powers to obtain information from insurers, investigate complaints and report findings with reasons.
Under Schedule 5, clause 7 of the Personal Injury Commission Act 2020, IRO can require an insurer to provide information reasonably needed for its functions. Compliance with that request is a condition of the insurer’s licence. Clause 8 provides for investigating complaints, reporting findings and reasons to the worker and insurer, and making recommendations for specified action. (legislation.nsw.gov.au, legislation.nsw.gov.au)
That raises a serious question: what should happen when a worker provides evidence that an insurer’s statements are false or misleading?
Those powers provide a means to obtain supporting records, examine discrepancies, question the insurer’s explanation and report findings. An allegation needs examination against the evidence. Simply accepting an insurer’s account wouldn’t resolve a documented contradiction.
What scrutiny occurred in my case? What did Catholic Church Insurance tell IRO? What information did IRO obtain? What records did it compare? What findings did it reach?
And why did the absence of an insurer-agreed “communication plan” prevent IRO from helping me obtain a straightforward written explanation of a call?
I didn’t understand what communication plan IRO was talking about. I said so. I was traumatised and grieving, yet another unexplained requirement was placed on me before my email was filed “without further action”.
The legislation allows IRO to decline to deal with a complaint under clause 8(5). That makes the basis for its decision an essential question: what reason justified closing this complaint, and how did that reason address what I had actually asked for? (legislation.nsw.gov.au)
I was told that the officer had reviewed my email with her director. I wasn’t informed who that director was. I regard the decision as irresponsible, but I can only go by the published leadership and governance roles at the time.
IRO’s 2022–23 Annual Report identifies Jeffrey Gabriel as Director Solutions, the group responsible for insurer complaints, and Simon Cohen as Independent Review Officer, heading the agency. Those published roles don’t establish who personally considered or approved the decision in my case. IRO should identify that person and explain their reasoning. (iro.nsw.gov.au).
I was an injured person asking for help to communicate safely with Catholic Church Insurance. I needed clarity, practical assistance and proper scrutiny of the concerns I raised.
Who took responsibility for examining the insurer’s conduct—and who took responsibility for the person left shaking, grieving and seeking answers alone?
References:
- Personal Injury Commission Act 2020, Schedule 5, clauses 7–8. This link is to the official consolidation dated 5 December 2025; it is not a retrieved December 2022 historical copy.
- IRO Annual Report 2022–23, pages 8–9, organisational structure and senior executives.
- IRO’s current complaints-about-insurers policy, which explains its information-gathering and complaint-handling powers. This is current guidance, rather than evidence of the policy wording in December 2022.
——
The year ended. The harm did not.
Meanwhile, documenting the harm had become relentless, unpaid work. I still had bills and tax obligations. I still had a home, a family and a life to sustain. Yet so much of my energy went into pursuing people and organisations whose actions were leaving me further from recovery.
The financial damage mattered. So did the indignity of being expected to keep absorbing it.
Our family knew what it meant to lose someone to suicide and live with the aftermath. I also remember being contacted in ways I experienced as harassment at my family home the day after my father’s death, when I needed compassion, privacy and room to grieve. At the end of 2022, grieving my aunt and Charlotte brought the need for that basic humanity into painful focus again.
My family’s grief was never something an institution was entitled to disregard. Neither was my vulnerability. See also: From the day after the tragedy.
I signed an employment contract, built my working life at ACU and earned my entitlements. I continued to seek recovery in the job I had not resigned from, supported by the written Injury Management Plan and the responsibilities I was asking ACU and Catholic Church Insurance to fulfil.
A university’s commitment to the dignity of the human person and the common good must be evident in how it treats its own people. Those words should have meant compassion, protection, honest communication and action when I reported harm. They should have extended to my family, whose privacy and wellbeing were also affected.
I wanted accountability for the conduct I had reported across HR, WHS and the Library Directorate, and for the failures I attributed to the insurer, government bodies and the NTEU. I wanted the financial consequences properly examined and remedied. I wanted meaningful action that would prevent another worker and another family from enduring this.
I’m writing my story publicly because I had spent too long trying to make myself heard within the very processes that were supposed to help and protect me.
The calendar could turn to 2023. My injury, the outstanding responsibilities and the consequences for my family didn’t disappear with it.
I entered the new year still seeking what I had needed throughout: safety, accountability, restoration and to recover in my job.
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