“Please make it stop”: My plea to the Fair Work Ombudsman - October 2022

After silence from my elected representative’s office, I wrote again to the Fair Work Ombudsman. I addressed the then Fair Work Ombudsman, Sandra Parker, directly in the letter. I was pleading. I was frightened, facing further financial loss, and trying to find someone who would listen to the seriousness of what was happening to me.

The heading of my letter said:

“URGENT — I can’t tolerate any more loss and this abuse anymore”. 

I wrote that two things required immediate action: the financial harm and the psychological harm. I was at risk of losing another $30,000 connected to a property purchase through my self-managed super fund. I had already drawn on my superannuation to protect my home. At the same time, I felt increasingly isolated from my work, my colleagues and the community to which I had contributed for over 20 years.

I asked a painfully ordinary question:

“I need to give an update to the finance broker this week. What do I say?”

That wasn’t a rhetorical question. A real deadline was approaching. I needed someone to understand that another delay had consequences in my actual life.

I had raised concerns about my workplace safety. Catholic Church Insurance had issued an injury management plan. I was asking for that plan to be implemented, for a safe return-to-work process, in a safe working environment. Those were not abstract documents to me. They were supposed to be a path back to my work and a way to prevent further harm.

In that letter, I used the word “reinstatement.” I understand why I did. I was pleading for someone to act. But it’s a word I no longer want to keep using to tell my story.

I did not resign. I did not choose to leave my job or my workplace community. I had worked hard for more than two decades, earned three degrees and made a substantial contribution in a senior library role. The people who worked with me can speak to that contribution. 

I shouldn’t have to plead as though my work and my place in that community never existed.

What I need is for the injury management plan to be carried out, for a return-to-work plan to be developed and implemented, and for the hazards I raised to be addressed so I can work safely. I need meaningful contact with my colleagues and my workplace community. And I need oversight that checks what’s happening in practice, rather than accepting an organisation’s description of its own compliance at face value.

A plan on paper doesn’t protect a person if nobody carries it out. The title or qualifications of a return-to-work coordinator do not protect a person if the necessary contact, planning and practical steps don’t happen. I have a SafeWork GIPA file, and I have tried to explain the distance between what was represented about return-to-work arrangements and what I experienced. 

That distance needs a legitimate independent examination.

See SIRA’s lazy response: http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/01/when-regulators-close-ranks-systemic.html

Instead, I felt I was being reduced to a characterisation of myself that I didn’t recognise. 

Isolation made it harder for the people who knew my work to be heard, and harder for me to challenge what was being said about me. 

The humiliation and shame of that are difficult to describe. 

I had spent years contributing to a university community, yet I was left trying to prove that I deserved to be treated with dignity.

In the letter, I tried to explain what repeated dealings with lawyers and agencies had done to my sense of safety. I wrote that I was in “‘don’t hurt me’ mode.” I said it was debilitating.

I wasn’t asking to be spared scrutiny. I was asking for the records and the conduct of everyone involved to be examined properly. I wanted someone to test the accounts they were being given, to ask whether the promised protections were operational, and to recognise the danger of leaving a frightened, injured person to navigate one more layer of bureaucracy alone.

Too often, it felt as though protecting the institution from risk mattered more than assessing and managing the risks to me. I cannot know every person’s motives. I can say that the combined effect of their actions and inaction was devastating. 

Policies about safety and the dignity of the human person mean very little if they are not upheld when someone needs them most.

I wrote:

“I need a support network from my university community colleagues.”

That need hasn’t gone away. Neither has my need to work safely, to recover, and to have the injury management and return-to-work obligations treated as real responsibilities rather than paperwork.

My letter ended with the words:

“Please make it stop.”

I shouldn’t have had to beg for so long to be heard. 

And I shouldn’t have to surrender my work, my community or my dignity to make the danger visible.

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 555.