When I reported suspected workers compensation fraud, SIRA sent my evidence back - October 2022

I have worked at Australian Catholic University since 2001. My role is a senior professional role, and I’m trying to return to it safely and recover in my work. I have not resigned.

On 25 June 2020, Catholic Church Insurance (CCI) issued an injury management plan. I expected my insurer and employer to work with me and my treating health professionals on a safe return to my role. I’m still asking why that plan wasn’t implemented. After my CCI case manager allegedly left, I asked who would replace her. I still need the case management and coordinated return-to-work support that should have followed.

My accrued leave was depleted (ie. stolen, almost $200,000 worth of accrued entitlements), while I tried to obtain that support. My weekly compensation payments never commenced. I continue to plead with failed regulators to enforce compliance regarding the payments owed to me. I’ve been forced to beg for what I’m legally owed under a statutory scheme! 

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On 11 January 2021, I complained to the NSW State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA). I reported suspected fraud, failures to comply with workers compensation requirements and continuing risks to my safety. I wrote:

“Instead, I received no RTW plan, no consent form from the RTW co-ordinator to sign giving permission for her to communicate with my health professionals, and no claim form to force a decision by the insurer in a 21-day deadline.”

SIRA acknowledged my complaint on 15 January 2021. I needed it to examine the records, give me clear answers and take action where the evidence warranted it.

See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/01/sira-nsw-when-system-sends-you-in.html

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By 10 March 2021, I was asking SIRA to explain its process in writing:

“You have not been transparent with me at all in your investigative processes. Therefore, you will put in writing for me: each step you took, with both the employer and insurer; what evidence was provided to support each allegation that there was compliance … did it ever occur to you to receive my evidence?”

Had SIRA examined the injury management plan? Had it established who was responsible for coordinating my return to work? Had it sought records from the insurer and employer and compared them with mine and those of my treating doctor? I am still entitled to know what was checked.

See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/01/when-regulators-close-ranks-systemic.html

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On 1 June 2021, I began sending records to a SIRA enforcement officer. On 7 June, I sent further records on a USB by registered post. I was trying to put the evidence before the authority responsible for oversight. As I explained in my email of 27 October 2022, SIRA returned the material to me by registered post.

How did sending my evidence back resolve anything?

Or this lack of transparency and integrity? See previous posts below:

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/02/sira-nsw-closed-my-complaint-phone.html; 

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

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Who investigates when benefits do not reach a worker?

SIRA’s own workers compensation fraud guidance includes an employer’s “failure to pass on workers compensation to the intended recipient” among its examples of possible employer fraud. I read that while trying to find out why I wasn’t receiving the weekly payments owed to me or cooperation from a RTW coordinator to communicate with my NTD and devise a return to work plan aligned to the injury management plan agreement! 

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

But I have a further question: what happens when the concern is about the insurer? 

Who examines an allegation that an insurer has withheld benefits, relied on an inaccurate account of a worker’s history, or failed to carry out the injury management steps it initiated? Who checks the insurer’s records against the worker’s records before accepting its explanation?

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

I’m asking for those matters to be investigated. I’m not saying that a fraud finding has already been made. But calling my concerns a dispute doesn’t answer an evidenced allegation about how my benefits and injury management have been handled! 

This wasn’t a “dispute”. That completely trivialised and dismissed a very serious report of suspected EMPLOYER AND INSURER FRAUD! 

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On 6 September 2021, I wrote:

“Had a worker engaged in fraud, these agencies would have been all over that individual and rightly so.”

Why should suspected wrongdoing involving an employer or insurer receive less scrutiny?

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I’ve never been “always unfit” for my professional role

I also sought answers through the Independent Review Office (IRO). I wanted Catholic Church Insurance’s position in writing. A phone call telling me what the insurer supposedly said wasn’t enough. I also found it unacceptable when IRO staff would do that. A written answer gives me something I can read, compare with the evidence and challenge if it’s wrong.

And the written response was extremely wrong and indefensible. 

See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/04/i-demanded-answers-in-writing-iro.html

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In my 27 October 2022 email to SIRA, I described CCI’s response as portraying me as “always unfit” for work. A dangerous and damaging characterisation. Does Catholic Church Insurance want to go public with this false statement? Do they want to open up a can of defamatory and discriminatory worms? 

I have worked in a professional role at ACU for two decades, with many years in a senior, high-level professional role. When I became injured, I asked for safeguards so I could recover and return safely to my work. My work history doesn’t disappear because an insurer lies to government agencies with a false narrative, that’s suspiciously consistent with the narrative of the employer’s national manager of employment relations and SAFETY, the perpetrator who ultimately led to my claim, “on behalf of the university.” 

I want CCI’s written response examined alongside my actual work history, the injury management plan and the reports of my treating professionals. I shouldn’t have to keep demanding that organisations obtain and record the insurer’s answers in writing. Written complaints deserve written answers.

IRO responses have shown that concerns about insurer conduct are not unknown to the system. In its 7 October 2022 response to a NSW parliamentary committee, the IRO called insurer case management “an ongoing area of concern” and identified insurer delays and errors in weekly payments among issues it had examined.

What about no weekly payments at all, IRO? 

They make my question more urgent: when a worker provides records of a serious failure (or suspected fraud), how is that concern independently examined and resolved?

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The harm is still growing

I estimate the financial consequences to me at more than $1.2 million. That’s a wider estimate of the damage, not a calculation of weekly payments alone. My depleted leave, the income and statutory benefits withheld, and the financial decisions forced on me have affected everything I have worked for. I’m also dealing with an ATO matter resulting from these consequences of regulatory failure! 

This isn’t a closed chapter of my life. I expect my statutory benefits of weekly payments and medical expenses owed, a case manager, implementation of the injury management plan, and a safe path back to my role. I haven’t given up my work or my place in my workplace community.

I reported these concerns while there was still time to prevent further harm. I kept writing. I kept asking the insurer and employer to carry out their responsibilities. I kept asking SIRA to examine what was happening. The damage has continued to grow while I wait and suffer, isolated, frightened, defrauded and with secondary trauma caused by the conduct and inaction of SIRA NSW and SafeWork NSW. 

I need a documented examination of what ACU did, what CCI did, what SIRA examined and why the evidence I sent didn’t produce clear answers. I want reasons and supporting records tested. I want to know how my report to regulators, of suspected fraud, was assessed and by whom.

I’m still here. I haven’t resigned. I’m asking for my statutory entitlements (that I shouldn’t be having to ask), and a safe return to the role and university community in which I have served for more than 20 years. SIRA and CCI should answer me in writing.

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Furthermore, I’m one person who has been left alone to fight TWO powerful institutions. I have spent years documenting what happened, asking for my statutory entitlements and trying to return and recover in my role, while the financial and personal harm continues to grow. 

I find it morally reprehensible that this remains unresolved. And UNCONSCIONABLE. 

What’s needed now is a genuinely independent external investigation into the corporate conduct of ACU and Catholic Church Insurance, including how my injury management, return to work and weekly payments were “handled”. It must examine the records, hear from the people involved and establish what happened, including how my evidence was treated by SIRA. 

I shouldn’t have to carry the burden of investigating two institutions on my own! That’s an unfair, unrealistic and impossible task to place on my shoulders while all these government agencies are left to continue to do NOTHING. And that goes for the responsible Ministers of the Minns government in office too! See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/09/i-asked-my-local-mp-chris-minns-to.html.

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Document 553.