UnSafeWork NSW: I Asked Them to Make the Harm Stop - November 2022

 “It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”  Noël Coward

On 2 November 2022, I sent an email with the subject line “UnSafeWork NSW.” I was frightened, exhausted and facing financial losses I could no longer absorb. I had spent years asking for a safe workplace and for the injury management plan issued by Catholic Church Insurance (CCI) to be put into effect. I wanted to recover and return to the job I had done for twenty years.

I wrote plainly about what I needed:

“Please don’t slap a list of useless numbers at me. Start listening to what I need to recover and be well.”

I needed my income, my workplace community and a safe path back to work. I needed the conduct I had reported to stop. 

I needed SIRA and SafeWork NSW to examine what the employer and insurer had actually done, rather than accept the existence of policies as proof that anyone was safe.

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The evidence I sent to SIRA

I had reported my concerns to SIRA on 11 January 2021. In the November 2022 email, I said I had sent evidence by registered post because I wanted a transparent investigation into what was serious wrongdoing under workers’ compensation arrangements. SIRA returned that material to me by registered post.

I couldn’t understand how returning the evidence answered the allegations. I asked:

“Can you enforce compliance SIRA and SafeWork NSW or not? Or are policies all you need to be shown as your interpretation of ‘compliance?’”

That question remains at the heart of this account:

If an injury management plan exists but the people responsible don’t carry it out, who steps in? What happens when the worker keeps asking for help and the financial and psychological harm continues?

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An injury management plan without the support I needed

CCI’s case manager issued an injury management plan. In my email to SIRA NSW, I described repeatedly asking who would replace her after I was told she had left. I also described asking CCI to communicate and cooperate in my recovery and return to work. My experience was silence.

I wrote that my nominated treating doctor and allied health professional hadn’t been contacted by the insurer to take part in that process. Meanwhile, I was using my personal, annual and long service leave. I couldn’t separate my psychological injury from the workplace conditions I had been asking others to address:

“Symptoms of psychological injuries cannot be treated separately from the cause. And no one listened to the cause.”

I DID NOT abandon my work. I’ve been asking to return to it safely, with the support the plan was meant to provide.

See: http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/06/injury-management-plan-legally-binding.html

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The cost of waiting

The email set out the financial consequences I was facing at the time. I wrote that I expected to forfeit a $30,000 deposit on an investment property because I now couldn’t finance the purchase. I also said I had needed to withdraw $300,000 from my superannuation to protect my home.

Those weren’t abstract figures in a claim file. They represented years of work, savings and plans for my future. Access to my job, income and workers’ compensation entitlements would have prevented that damage. By November 2022, I was still pleading for someone to investigate and intervene.

“I have a mortgage and bills like all of you.”

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What happened around Christmas

In the same email to SafeWork NSW, I looked back at two Decembers.

Around 22 December 2020, a letter arrived from my employer. I didn’t open it. I wrote “return to sender” and posted it back. It was Christmas, and I was already frightened and traumatised by what they had done to me and my family. I didn’t feel emotionally safe opening another unexpected cruel letter from university leaders not aligned to the mission, which includes a commitment to the dignity of the human person. This organisational behaviour was sadistic.

See: http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/01/quality-staff-and-university-leaders.html

On 10 December 2021, I emailed SIRA about whether I could safely open registered post it had sent me. I recorded in this email that a SIRA officer replied on 14 December 2021 to a different email address, one I was no longer checking for my emotional safety. I couldn’t know why that address was used, but at the time it added to my distress and my sense that I wasn’t being heard. Do I need to spell out to SIRA NSW that this is called trauma, secondary trauma caused by their very conduct and attitude to a serious complaint? 

See: http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/04/is-it-safe-to-open-what-that-question.html

I also referred to return-to-work material published on 21 December 2021. Statistics and statements about improved outcomes were painful to read while I was still asking how my injury management plan would be implemented.

See: http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/09/sira-nsw-regulator-already-knew-system.html

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What I wanted SafeWork NSW to see

I described my experience of a SafeWork NSW inspector in October 2020, including my recollection of being told:

“Well they’ll just show their policies and I don’t want to ruffle feathers.”

That statement shocked me. A workplace can produce polished policies. The question I was asking was whether those policies protected me in practice, and whether anyone would act when I reported that they did not!

I was also trying to explain the effect of isolation. I had spent two decades in my university community. A university employer recklessly barring contact with colleagues and the support of that community while trying to recover, a workplace right, was itself deeply painful and cruel. It definitely didn’t align with the mission. I wrote:

“I need a support network from my university community I’ve been part of for twenty years.”

My email contained accusations of fraud, mistreatment and regulatory failure. Those were the serious concerns I was asking the relevant bodies to investigate. They should have been examined through evidence and a fair process. I was one person, trying to be heard while the consequences kept growing.

Near the end, I asked:

“Is anyone going to make the abuse stop?”

I was asking for action: an examination of the evidence, accountability for the injury management plan, and a safe way to recover in the job I had served for twenty years. More than anything, I was asking people with the power to intervene to listen before further harm was done.

But SafeWork NSW kept ignoring me. Where’s the regulator’s responsibility for the foreseeable harm they allowed to continue? 

See: 

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/08/enter-unsafework-nsw-that-rtw-plan-i.html

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/08/whs-and-wellbeing-manager-negligence.html

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/08/harassment-continued-violation-of.html

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/08/unmanaged-psychosocial-hazards-october.html

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/09/psychological-terrorism-from-whs-duty.html

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/09/injury-management-and-rehabilitation.html

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 556.