Chris Minns, I Was Frightened. I Needed You to Care - January 2023

The human cost of pleading for help while my family carried the harm—and why Kogarah needs to hear my story before the next election.

On 22 January 2023, I sent an email that began:

“I’m really frightened now.”

Those five words should have mattered.

Behind them was a woman trying to protect her family from more harm, save her home and return safely to the work she had done for twenty years. I was carrying my own trauma alongside fear for people I loved. I was trying to navigate institutions that had power over my livelihood while struggling to find anyone who would help me.

I was frightened of what another delay, another financial blow, another distressing communication might do to us.

And I was still asking for help. The help I needed involved SafeWork NSW, SIRA NSW, IRO and a serious systemic problem that harms the very people this statutory scheme is set up to protect. 

Fraud is a crime, not matter who commits it in this scheme. That’s why I now call it a scam. Because these regulators are allowing some stakeholders to commit fraud, despite the evidence placed in front of them, for years. Under the Minns government, it’s not a scheme that’s working as Parliament had intended. 

——

I was your constituent

I turned to Chris Minns. I sent him my plea and told him:

“You’re the Labor Leader likely soon to be Premier. I’m a constituent who needed your help.”

I asked him:

“Are you going to continue to let this exploitation go on?”

And:

“Please finally help me.”

There is so much exhaustion in that word: finally.

I told him I had needed to take more than $300,000 from my superannuation in May 2022 to save my home. That was the financial reality I reported to my elected representative. Money accumulated through years of work had become a means of surviving a crisis I was asking public institutions to stop.

What did I need to say for my situation to become urgent enough?

How frightened did I need to be?

How much did my family have to carry?

I needed someone with influence to take my evidence seriously, ask questions and pursue meaningful assistance. I needed my representative to recognise that every further delay had a human cost.

——

Fear for my family, with nowhere to put it

The harm reached into our family’s health, our wellbeing and our dignity. We were carrying fear and trauma while trying to care for one another, with far too little support. The way we were treated made an already painful situation even more distressing.

On 22 January, I tried to explain:

“My family ask when is this going to end, but I don’t know…”

Imagine being asked that by people you love when you’re already doing everything you can.

I had no reassuring answer. I couldn’t promise that the next person I contacted would act. I couldn’t say that someone was taking responsibility for stopping the harm. I was trying to support my family while frightened about their wellbeing, my home and my future.

Trauma had made it difficult for me to open letters and emails. Even opening a message could mean facing more distress. And then I was frightened that my difficulty opening them would be used against me.

That’s a terrible position to be in: frightened of the communications, frightened of the consequences of not opening them, and without the support needed to manage either.

I was still gathering records, explaining what had happened and asking for help. But continuing to do that didn’t mean I was unharmed. It meant I was carrying the work of seeking protection while needing protection myself.

——

Another plea: somebody stop this

I pleaded again:

“Somebody inform governance at ACU and self-insurer to stop this now!”

I asked Cheryl Han at the Kogarah electorate office in an email:

“Is Chris willing to give it another go for my sake and my family’s this time?”

I was referring to this:

The Social Media Post I Saw on 29 April 2022

That question hurts to read now.

——

For my sake and my family’s. This time.

I was still hoping Chris Minns might help. Still trying to find a way through his office. Still explaining that the consequences reached beyond me.

By 23 January 2023, the strain on my family was unbearable. Behind my pleas were ordeals we were suffering at home, fears for our health and the exhaustion of trying to hold ourselves together.

I was frightened for my family’s health. I was watching the trauma reach people I loved. We were living with the consequences every day, while I kept searching for someone willing to help stop them.

ACU had a duty of care towards me as its employee. Its conduct placed my health and safety at risk, and the consequences extended into my family’s lives. My family carried trauma and health burdens arising from a situation they hadn’t created and couldn’t resolve. That widening harm is part of what I was begging people to stop.

It was horrendous to carry my own fear while fearing what this was doing to them. I needed to care for them, but I also needed someone to help protect us from further harm.

I needed help to stop what I was reporting. I needed someone to care enough to follow through.

——

The betrayal is personal

My anger at Chris Minns comes from that place.

I approached him as my elected representative for Kogarah. I wanted to believe that a Labor representative would care about a worker asking for safety, dignity and to return to her job as per workers compensation statutory compliance and injury management plan agreement. 

I now feel profoundly betrayed.

In my experience, the more I tried to obtain help, the more harm I was left carrying. Each further attempt required me to explain the trauma again, expose the urgency again and hope again—while the situation continued.

What has stayed with me is the feeling that I could tell my own representative how frightened I was, how much my family was suffering, how much I stood to lose—and still be left carrying it.

Whose interests were being served while I kept pleading? Why did I feel that seeking help left me more exposed? Those questions deserve answers.

I’m entitled to question conduct that left me feeling that the institutions I was reporting were protected while I was left exposed.

And I’m entitled to describe the betrayal of seeking help from my own representative and experiencing further harm instead of meaningful support.

My anger comes from years of trying, trusting and being hurt. It comes from having to ask again when I had already explained how frightened I was.

——

What do promises of compassion mean to someone left alone?

I hear governments talk about suicide prevention, compassionate systems and the importance of ensuring that people don’t suffer alone.

I was living the very isolation those promises are supposed to address:

“I’m frightened, confused by the system and very alone. I need to know. Does anyone care?”

I meant that question. I needed to know whether anyone cared enough to help me.

What does compassion mean if a person has to keep begging for it?

What does preventing harm mean if the response doesn’t address the circumstances causing the distress?

What does “support” mean when the person asking for it remains responsible for navigating the entire system alone?

From where I stood, those reassuring words were bullshit.

I needed practical help. I needed someone to engage with the evidence, pursue answers and help stop the circumstances I was reporting. I needed support that reached my life.

——

ACU’s mission had to mean something for my family too

My family’s positive affiliations with the Australian Catholic University reach back to the late 1990s. That history makes this experience even more painful.

In my January 2023 email, I wrote:

“As long as the mission, values, laws, Catholic Social Teachings stand for this university, I expect them to apply it in my case.”

I still do.

I expect ACU’s commitments to the dignity of the human person and the common good to have meaning in the treatment of staff and their families. I expect its leadership to act consistently with its identity, mission, values, staff code of conduct and policies.

The leadership’s treatment of my case has betrayed those commitments. Family vulnerabilities and trauma were exploited in the conduct I reported, rather than treated with care and respect.

There’s an entire family behind this story. People whose health, wellbeing and dignity matter. People who should never have had to carry this burden.

I find it extremely shameful that a publicly funded Catholic university, with a role in educating future teachers and professionals who care for children and families, could leave my own family carrying this level of harm. What meaning do its commitments have if the people asking it to honour them are treated this way?

And I find it shameful that we could be left feeling abandoned by an elected representative whose constituents we were. Our family belonged to the community he was supposed to represent. Our suffering should have mattered.

A university can’t answer that human harm simply by pointing to the values it professes. Its conduct must withstand scrutiny.

——

I want to drive down Regent Street without this trauma

Before the next election, I want people in Kogarah to hear my story.

They deserve to know how much my family and I have suffered during the years Chris Minns has been our elected representative. They deserve to hear what seeking his help felt like when I was frightened, under financial pressure from fraud and coercion as adverse action, not only from my powerful nationally registered publicly funded university employer, but its equally powerful APRA regulated specialised insurer, and trying to protect the people I loved.

I have felt as though we were expected to disappear: worn down, silenced and out of sight before another election. That’s how this treatment has felt to me. But we are still here, and I want people to hear what we have endured.

My anger at his time as Premier is inseparable from that experience. When I hear others describe their own disappointment or harm under his government, I want our story to be heard too. His public image doesn’t erase what seeking his help has meant for my family.

For me, this has become so personal that driving down Regent Street, Kogarah, past Chris Minns’s office can bring the trauma back.

An electorate office should be somewhere a constituent can turn for help. For me, it has become a reminder of pleading, waiting and feeling abandoned. And Kogarah electorate staff who are anything but kind toward constituents. They’ll soon want our votes, again, and they’ll pretend they care about us, again, to get them. 

They’ve turned public service into self service. 

I can’t wait to see the back of him as my representative. That’s how deeply betrayed I feel. I want the freedom to drive down that street without being pulled back into what I carried while asking him to help.

On 22 January 2023, I wrote: “I’m really frightened now.”

I needed those words to reach someone.

I needed my representative to care—and to act as though my family and I mattered.

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents  631, 636.

I am frightened and writing my story publicly for my safety, after exhausting the avenues reasonably available to obtain protection. I want the harm to stop so I can recover safely in my job.