I Asked for a Safe Work Environment. I Was Repeatedly Directed to “Medical Assessments” Under Threat

I Had Had Enough: My Complaint to SIRA About Medical Assessments, Safety and a System I Could No Longer Trust

By the time I sent this complaint on 21 October 2022 to the NSW State Insurance Regulatory Authority, I had had enough.

I wanted a safe work environment. After my employer continued to injure me in retaliation, I wanted the injury management plan issued by Catholic Church Insurance on 25 June 2020 to be implemented. I wanted to recover in my job, with communication between my treating practitioners, the insurer and my employer, and safeguards against the conduct I had reported.

Instead, I was trying to protect myself from contact I experienced as harassment “on behalf of the university”, struggling to maintain a connection with my workplace while this individual was isolating me “on behalf of the university”, and being directed toward further medical assessments under vague and fabricated threats, “on behalf of the university.”

I requested a safe work environment, and instead, I found myself repeatedly having to answer questions about my “fitness for work” that I’ve been successfully performing for two decades, while unethical practitioners were deemed to have a right to an “opinion” but my voice and statutory right to return and recover in my HEW 8 professional job in my university community, was disrespectfully ignored and disregarded by both regulators and lawyers. 

All this shit was happening around me, while my questions about workplace safety went unanswered. That’s why the conduct of independent medical examinations became part of my complaint to SIRA. It was also why I questioned the way SIRA and SafeWork NSW responded when I sought accountability.

That’s the context missing when my story is reduced to whether I attended an IME. I did attend assessments. Too many “assessments” under threat and beyond reasonable and fair, whether from employer or insurer, depending what fabricated excuse suited the fragmented system that has allowed them to do this. But the SafeWork NSW inspector believed it all, because of the perpetrator’s job title, while literally telling me, “I’m not here to play he said she said.” 

I also asked why aaaaalllllll these repeated IMEs were necessary, what information practitioners had been given, how my privacy would be protected (because it hadn’t been so far), whether I could have someone with me as one safeguard, and what anyone was actually doing about the conditions I told them had injured me.*

*See SafeWork NSW’s response quoted above. In other words they were doing NOTHING but then went further by perpetuating the lie they were told! No independent verification or if the agreements, plans, policies, laws and regulations were operationally implemented!

To me, all this is victim blaming at a whole new systemic level, ironically, by regulatory agencies we trusted to intervene and keep us safe at work! 

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

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

——

A report after an examination that never took place

On 14 November 2019, I went to an appointment with Deepinder Miller, arranged by my publicly funded university employer, under a vague by very frightening and distressing threat, from the moment I requested a psychosocially safe work environment. I asked questions because I didn’t understand why I had been sent there, straight after raising concerns about my safety at work. Why had I been sent for an “assessment” after raising concerns about bullying, harassment and my safety at work?

Deepinder Miller ended the appointment and told me to ask HR.

I won’t repeat Deepinder Miller’s lies on record. It’s retraumatising. I’ve already written emotionally charged posts on those incidents of WHS breaches leading to distress and fear in my story - 

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/01/a-doctor-who-commits-fraud-2019.html; and http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/02/hr-associate-director-unfit-to-do.html

I had attended. I was trying to understand the purpose of the assessment. An examination didn’t proceed, yet a substantial “report” was produced about me. I found that horrifying.

It wasn’t merely an upsetting appointment that I could put behind me. I received the report much later, in October 2020, alongside arrangements for yet another “assessment” by my publicly funded university employer under a continuation of their bullshit and vague threats, only three months after one I attended for the insurer, Catholic Church Insurance. ONLY THREE MONTHS APART with relentless harassment in between by the cause of my claim, the national manager of employment relations and SAFETY, and suspiciously no cooperation from CCI from around August 2020, including no identified case manager responsible to implement the injury management plan agreement?!

And then RG, the “senior claims specialist”, suddenly recorded herself as case manager after ignoring me, waiting for the damage to be done and fooling workers compensation solicitor #1. The records don’t lie when forensically analysed, nor the reactive cover up attempts, like RG suddenly having left CCI when my GP was given the run around when trying to get a hold of this alleged case manager. And nobody knew she had supposedly left and suddenly now worked for Transport for NSW?

See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/03/sira-nsw-and-illusion-of-regulation.html

Have readers caught on to what’s going here, because the regulators still haven’t. 

Going back to Deepinder Miller. I questioned how such a detailed account could result from a meeting that had ended without an examination, and I disputed statements about what happened. Seeing that account used in further correspondence deepened my fear of what could be written about me without my experience being fairly heard.

I couldn’t bring myself to read it then. I still haven’t fully read it for my safety now. The delay, the disputed description of our brief meeting and the arrival of the report alongside another appointment, almost a year later, after non-stop WHS and regulatory violations by both employer and insurer, added to my distress. I complained about that experience and sought scrutiny of how an account of an examination that didn’t proceed had been produced and used.

The bundle I sent to SIRA NSW in October 2022 included public reviews concerning Deepinder Miller. I cannot verify what happened to the people who wrote them, and I don’t present their allegations as findings. They alarmed me because I recognised concerns about being listened to and about what appeared in reports. I wanted the bodies responsible for oversight to examine complaints properly, including my own.

A practitioner conducting an assessment of someone reporting psychological injury should understand that the manner of questioning and the handling of sensitive information can themselves cause distress. 

I didn’t  surrender my dignity or my interest in privacy by attending an appointment.

I’m sure the Hippocratic Oath that doctors swear by includes to “do no harm.” 

I’m sure Hippocrates didn’t make an exception to allow a continuation of adverse action and systemic harm directed at workers who had a requested a workplace right to a safe work environment. 

What a messed up system our contemporary society has! Where are the SAFEGUARDS?!

——

A “Significant Cost” to the University. What About the Cost to Me?

In January 2020, the university arranged another assessment after their true motive with Deepinder Miller failed. This time it was with Michael Robertson. I engaged a second employment lawyer to challenge what was happening. I didn’t attend that proposed appointment.

On 15 January 2020, the university HR associate director asked my now second employment lawyer whether I intended to attend on 21 January. The email said:

“You will appreciate that if the University does not cancel the appointment in advance, a significant cost will still need to be paid”.

To quote from my post regarding that incident:

“How significant has the cost been for the university, by HR executive staff, to destroy my life, defrauding me of all my leave entitlements (personal, annual and long service leave), income, superannuation, livelihood, workers compensation fraud and likely more in suspected coercion, influence, aiding, abetting etc. of others, to collude in such destruction? 

The financial abuse and exploitation alone should be taken extremely seriously, as well as contraventions of WHS laws.”

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/02/employment-lawyer-2-part-1-2020.html

——

More appointments, while I was asking for protection and a return to my work

In mid-2020, I attended an insurer-arranged assessment with Melissa Barrett. I raised concerns about that experience, including the refusal of a support person. A safeguard!

See: http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/06/a-doctor-full-of-innuendo-lies-and.html

Around the same period, I was trying to coordinate with my treating practitioners, the insurer and the university about returning to my work. My treating professionals had recommended rehabilitation support to help the people involved communicate. Then, on 25 June 2020, the insurer issued an injury management plan. Those were practical steps toward a supported return. I wanted them followed through.

Instead, the stressor that I’d been trying to protect myself from continued to contact me. The university’s national manager of employment relations and safety now used a new excuse to continue badgering and harassing me, when I had explicitly emailed her to LEAVE ME ALONE! 

I tried reporting the harassment to police; I sought other means of protection, including an attempted application for an apprehended personal violence order; I tried blocking her emails to remove the stressor as per WHS policy; I begged the NTEU to intervene; and I finally asked for help from SafeWork NSW. 

My doctor recorded “psychological guarding” concerning this person on my certificate of capacity. ACU and CCI didn’t even honour that recorded legal obligation for my safety either! All failed me and I was left unsafe, unprotected and in the hands of the primary cause of my claim, Rena Christmann! 

I told the SafeWork NSW inspector that I was being isolated from colleagues who had been part of my working life for almost twenty years, while contact from the person I had asked to be protected from continued. That isolation was a safety concern in its own right. 

SafeWork NSW recognises that limited access to other people and difficulty obtaining communication or emotional support can create psychosocial risks. I needed the SafeWork NSW inspector to consider the combined effect of the isolation, the continuing contact and the pressure to attend another “assessment” only THREE MONTHS after Melissa  Barrett and without both employer and insurer cooperating with their return to work statutory obligations! Those risks were not addressed or investigated by SafeWork NSW. Instead the inspector told me they were not there “to play he said she said”, but did. SafeWork NSW took the word of the very perpetrator, who spoke “on behalf of the university.” 

What SafeWork NSW did (and didn’t do that they should have done), along with how they treated me, is unforgivable and indefensible. 

Those colleagues are part of my workplace community that I’ve known for almost twenty years. I wanted them to be able to speak with me. Feeling cut off from them intensified my isolation. IT STILL DOES AND THE TORTURE IS NOW SO MUCH WORSE. 

SAFEWORK NSW REFUSED TO LISTEN REPEATEDLY, AND STOP THIS COERCED ISOLATION AND RECOGNISED PSYCHOSOCIAL HAZARD THAT WAS COMING FROM A PUBLICLY FUNDED UNIVERSITY EMPLOYER!

——

I needed the injury management plan put into action

In October 2020, another appointment was arranged by the stressor who caused the claim and whom both employer and insurer allowed to continue harassing me under a statutory scheme. This time with Peter Young ONLY THREE MONTHS after Melissa Barrett. On 12 October, I told the university’s WHS manager about the psychological guarding on my certificate and I forwarded the appointment correspondence and wrote:

“What are you doing to ensure my safety…?”

That was a direct appeal for help. It needs to be read with everything happening around it: the earlier assessment for the insurer, the injury management plan I wanted implemented, the ongoing contact that distressed me, and my efforts to obtain protection. I couldn’t  understand why another assessment was being pressed while my request to be protected from the reported workplace stressor remained unresolved.

CCI were fully aware. It was documented in incident #24 in their own commissioned FACTUAL INVESTIGATION REPORT! 

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/05/catholic-church-insurance-june-2020.html

I also told my employer’s WHS and Wellbeing manager that I was distressed and demanded for Rena Christmann to stop contacting me. I told him to make the bullying and harassment to stop. That email shows what I was asking for at the time. I wasn’t asking to be left without support or without a path back to work. I was asking someone with responsibility for safety to address the conditions that were harming me!

Christmann was contacting the office of my treating psychologist without my permission (no signed consent) and even WITH PSYCHOLOGICAL GUARDING RECORDED on an updated medical certificate! This was a safe space I had a right to preserve without brazen harassment from Rena Christmann to distress me! How dare she! 

My nominating treating professionals’ correspondence that month also said they’d recommended an independent rehabilitation provider to liaise between the parties. It was explained to Christmann in an email that therapy sessions were precious time and that my treating professional’s role was as my psychologist, not a messenger. 

I needed practical coordination of my return, yet I felt trapped in a cycle of multiple and unethical appointment letters and distressing contact! No safety provided WHATSOEVER, ACU General Counsel! 

I hadn’t signed a consent form authorising that national manager to contact my psychologist. I wanted to know what information was being sought or shared, on what basis, and why the recommended rehabilitation support had not become the focus.

I also raised concerns about the handling of private messages and the effect on my family. My family made a complaint. These matters added to my sense that even attempts to seek support or maintain private relationships could draw other people into what was happening to me. They deserve careful investigation, not dismissal as an emotional reaction to an appointment letter.

——

Where was the boundary between the processes?

When I sought help from SafeWork NSW, I was trying to get a workplace safety concern addressed. I understood that the national manager of employment relations and safety was also communicating with the SafeWork NSW inspector, “on behalf of the university”. Yet my concerns about the continuing contact and isolation were being pushed between workplace safety, workers’ compensation and employment processes.

That gap is a serious systemic problem. If one body treats the assessment as an employment matter, another treats my safety complaint as separate from the compensation claim, and another focuses only on the medical report, who looks at their combined effect on the injured worker? It’s a faulty “process” that’s open to abuse by the employer as a continuation of adverse action!

At that critical moment, I didn’t need someone to invent another process for me. I needed someone to ask why I was being directed to another assessment so soon after the insurer’s assessment, while my treating practitioners’ concerns and my request for a safe return were still unresolved. I needed someone to examine whether the assessments were necessary, how they were arranged, and whether safeguards were actually provided! 

——

Even the written safeguard did not hold

Moving on to yet more traumatic systemic abuse. On 29 September 2021, I attended a video assessment arranged through the Personal Injury Commission with Professor Nicholas Glozier. The Commission’s written instructions said I could have one support person in the room if I announced that person at the start. I relied on that instruction. On the day, Glozier made my friend leave and engaged in conduct that was intrusive and violated my privacy, while responding to my question as to why he insisted that my support person leave, that “sometimes workers compensation solicitors get it wrong.” 

THESE INSTRUCTIONS AND RIGHTS CAME DIRECTLY FROM THE PERSONAL INJURY COMMISSION! 

I WANT HONEST ANSWERS! I THINK THE PUBLIC DESERVE HONEST ANSWERS! 

See:

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-examination-i-was-not-prepared-for.html

I wrote to the Commission in October asking why the support described in its own instructions had been denied to me. That assessment took place inside my home. My concern is the loss of the safeguard I had been told I could use. 

I wanted to know how the decision to exclude my support person was reached, particularly when the Commission’s own written instructions had told me I could have one!

See:

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/03/personal-injury-commission-pic-what.html

——

What I wanted SIRA to answer

In June 2021, SIRA’s Enforcement and Prosecutions team acknowledged receiving my emails, attachments and material sent by registered post. A manager said she would review the information, identify matters within SIRA’s jurisdiction and respond with an outcome. I felt relief when I received that message. I thought the records I had worked so hard to assemble would finally be examined.

This is what happened instead:

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

I had asked about the insurer’s actions, the absence of a replacement case manager, the injury management plan, my leave and income, and my ability to return safely to my work.

That’s why my complaint to SIRA NSW this time, in October 2022, was angry. My language was raw. I said I had had enough. 

I questioned how a worker could be directed from one process to another while the original need for a safe return to work remained unresolved. I was frightened by what was happening to my health and livelihood and my human dignity, and angry that I still had to keep proving I was asking for help.

I had lost trust in SIRA and SafeWork NSW through my experience of trying to obtain answers from them.

——

Whose costs counted?

I also keep returning to the university’s concern about a “significant cost”. What did ACU spend on proposed assessments and the “processes” that followed? What did CCI spend? I don’t have their complete figures, and I won’t invent them.

I can describe the cost to me. I used personal, annual and long service leave while trying to obtain help and return safely to work. By my calculations, that amounted to 305 days of leave, worth nearly $200,000. I was left without the ongoing income and workers’ compensation payments I was entitled to receive. I also experienced losses involving my superannuation and property. The amounts and responsibility for those losses need to be examined against the records.

See:

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/09/theft-of-two-decades-of-accrued-leave.html; and 

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/09/greater-wage-theft-and-fraud-from-pcbu.html; and 

http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-home-i-was-trying-to-secure-and.html and any post on the parallel crisis and snowball effect. 

The university counted the potential cancellation fee for one appointment. 

See http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/02/employment-lawyer-2-part-1-2020.html.

Who was counting the cost of leaving me without the supported return to work and statutory benefits withheld that I had been asking for?

——

Why I am naming the practitioners

I’ve named the practitioners because their assessments or proposed assessments are part of the documented sequence I’m describing. I believe people should be able to discuss what happened to them in a medical assessment, identify the assessment they mean, and ask how complaints about it are handled.

Naming a practitioner doesn’t mean I can determine their motives, establish the truth of every public review, or make a finding of professional misconduct. Those questions require a proper examination of records and an opportunity for the people involved to respond. What I can say is what I experienced, what I disputed, what the written instructions said, and what I asked the responsible bodies to investigate.

What I cannot accept is a version of this history in which I’m said simply to have resisted “assessment”. I attended appointments, raised concerns, sought protection and kept asking to return to my work safely. The distress those assessments caused, and the safety concerns I raised while they were being arranged, belong in the same account.

My trust in the system was worn away over years of trying to get clear answers from my employer, insurer, SIRA, SafeWork NSW, and other “processes”. Each time I was redirected or left without an answer, it became harder to believe anyone would take responsibility for the whole picture.

I am still asking for that whole picture to be examined. I want the concerns I raised about the assessments and support safeguards addressed. I want a clear account of what happened to the injury management plan issued on 25 June 2020. Above all, I want the safe, supported return to my work that I had been asking for from the beginning.

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 549-550.

When Legal Correspondence Becomes Another Source of Trauma - October 2022

On 17 October 2022, I received correspondence from my now second workers’ compensation solicitor.

My immediate response said everything:

“Seriously I feel like vomiting from trauma every time I get a letter from a solicitor.”

That wasn’t an exaggeration. By then, correspondence from lawyers had itself become a trauma trigger. I had repeatedly been forced to explain a situation that, at its core, wasn’t complicated.

I wanted a safe work environment.

I wanted the agreed Injury Management Plan implemented.

I wanted the employer and insurer required to comply with their statutory obligations. 

Instead, I had been passed between employment and workers’ compensation lawyers while regulators and legal processes divided my experience into disconnected legal categories. Nobody appeared willing to confront the central failure: laws and regulations may exist on paper, but what protection do they provide when compliance isn’t enforced?

The letter asked me to read lengthy workers’ compensation advice “carefully”. My handwritten response on the document recorded what that demand felt like:

“I’m supposed to read this carefully all alone with no support, after so much trauma and failure, solicitors included.”

I also wrote:

“ALL I ASKED FOR WAS A SAFE WORK ENVIRONMENT.”

Enclosed with the correspondence was the report by Nicholas Glozier from October 2021, the Medical Assessor appointed through the Personal Injury Commission. I haven’t read that report. I have protected myself from reading it because of the serious emotional, professional and financial harm associated with that “assessment” and the “process” surrounding it.

Simply sending that report to me, without trauma-informed support, or any apparent appreciation of its potential impact after what it did to me demonstrated another failure to understand what injured workers may already have endured.

During the assessment, this assessor denied me the safeguard of having a support person present to support me, take notes and witness what occurred. I’ll address that experience separately, together with the Personal Injury Commission’s information about safeguards and rights during IMEs and my complaint to the Health Care Complaints Commission.

This isn’t merely about whether compensation was available under one narrow part of the scheme. It’s about why an injured worker seeking safety, dignity and a return to her job was left carrying the consequences of widespread institutional non-compliance.

Why?

When employers and insurers are not compelled to meet their obligations, when regulators don’t enforce compliance, and when legal “processes” add further trauma instead of securing protection, the question remains:

What practical value do workplace laws and workers’ compensation regulations have if nobody makes the responsible organisations obey them?

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 542-543.

I Asked My Local MP, Chris Minns, to Listen: The Records from October 2021 to October 2022

 “The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born.” – Warren Bennis

The two documents reflected on in this post preserve part of the written record of my repeated attempts to obtain help from my local NSW member of Parliament, Chris Minns, the Member for Kogarah and then Leader of the Opposition.

I wasn’t approaching his office over a minor disagreement. I was reporting what were serious failures within the NSW workers compensation and work health and safety systems. I was asking for help to obtain safety, accountability, implementation of my Injury Management Plan and a return to my substantive work.

I wanted to recover safely in my work, with my workplace rights and accrued entitlements protected.

The records show that my approaches were not confined to one email. They continued over many months while my psychological and financial circumstances deteriorated.

——

15 October 2021: “Does anyone truly care?”

The chronology begins on 15 October 2021, when I emailed the Kogarah electorate office after trying unsuccessfully to obtain meaningful assistance from the agencies responsible for regulating workers compensation and workplace safety.

I wrote:

“I have to ask you honestly. Does anyone truly care? Have I any value, in return for everything I’ve contributed to our society and to those I worked with or supported in teaching, learning and research?”

I asked whether public commitments to mentally healthy workplaces and effective government regulation were genuine. I also asked the office of Mr Minns to review the evidence and meet with me.

My email explained that the principal document provided to me under workers compensation arrangements was an Injury Management Plan dated 25 June 2020. This plan had not been implemented, with no cooperation from employer and insurer to do so. 

I wrote:

“Once you’ve reviewed the evidence, please consider calling me for a meeting to discuss. But please don’t delay for too long. I need to go back to my work.”

I finished with the words:

“Please listen because nobody has so far.”

That was not political theatre. It was a direct request from a constituent seeking help.

——

November 2021: my requests became increasingly urgent

By 9 November 2021, I was describing the profound effect that the continuing situation was having on me:

“No one has been there for me, being the one time I needed support, and I don’t know if I’ll survive the torture and victimisation much longer if someone doesn’t end it.”

Between 11 and 16 November 2021, I sent further communications to the Kogarah office. I explained that I had approached state agencies, the union, lawyers, police and the court system, yet I was still left unprotected.

I wrote:

“I’m still being victimised and no one is making it stop.”

I identified the practical outcomes I was seeking:

“I want my workers compensation entitlements that were withheld provided and to return to my job. I want my long service leave and annual leave and so much personal leave taken while they victimised and threatened me, to be recredited.”

I also made clear that I wasn’t  prepared to accept a narrative that erased my long record of capable service:

“I’ve worked in my job for twenty years and now I’m suffering discrimination.”

The request to my MP’s office was direct:

“I need to return to my job safely asap. SIRA is not doing their job. Can I get support from my local MP with this?”

Between 22 and 28 November 2021, I continued asking for help:

“Please help me before it’s too late.”

I again stated what I needed:

“I need my job and implementation of the injury management plan asap.”

These were written warnings that my position was becoming increasingly dangerous—psychologically, physically and financially.

——

December 2021 to February 2022: the correspondence continued

From 1 to 10 December 2021, I copied the Kogarah electorate office into further correspondence in which I tried to hold SIRA and SafeWork NSW accountable.

Between 11 and 23 December 2021, I continued writing because the financial consequences were becoming more severe. My home was at risk.

The correspondence continued throughout January and February 2022. By then, I was exhausted and traumatised. My objective had nevertheless remained consistent: implementation of the Injury Management Plan, restoration of the entitlements that had been depleted or withheld, regulatory accountability and a safe return to my substantive role.

This wasn’t a person changing her demands from one day to the next. 

It was a worker repeatedly asking for the same fundamental protections.

——

March and April 2022: public commitments and private inaction

During March 2022, I became increasingly distressed by what I saw as a stark gap between public political messaging and my experience as a constituent.

Mr Minns was publicly presenting himself as someone who listened to workers and cared about safe workplaces. Yet I still hadn’t had the meeting I had repeatedly requested, nor received any meaningful account of what action had been taken in response to the extensive material I had provided.

In April 2022, I continued sending emails to the electorate office and to university governance.

I wasn’t asking my local MP to determine a legal dispute personally. I was asking him to examine evidence concerning the conduct of NSW regulators, raise those matters through the proper parliamentary and ministerial channels, and help a constituent reach the bodies capable of taking action.

——

9 May 2022: the human consequences of not being heard

On 9 May 2022, I attended the Kogarah electorate office after learning that Mr Minns had met with the University’s Vice-Chancellor.

I wasn’t given a transparent account of whether my situation, my workplace rights or the failures I had reported had been discussed.

I was told by Cheryl Han, an electorate-office staff member:

“I don’t think they’re going to give you your job back.”

That statement terrified and humiliated me. My job and 20 years of accrued entitlements and benefits never passed on under workers compensation regulations (ie. Fraud) should NEVER have been stolen as the most immoral and horrific adverse action to begin with! 

Not to mention that wasn’t the purpose of a local MP’s office. I went there for help regarding the failures of two state regulators - SafeWork NSW and SIRA NSW! That’s within the remit of the office of an elected representative! 

I had sought a safe return, implementation of the Injury Management Plan and compliance with the obligations applying to my employer, insurer and the relevant regulators.

After leaving the Kogarah electorate office, I sat in my car outside in the rain. I was alone, overwhelmed and frightened about losing my home and the effect this would have on my family.

The second document records how close I came to not surviving that moment. I include this because it demonstrates the foreseeable human consequences when a traumatised constituent repeatedly asks for help and experiences only silence, delay or dismissive messages.

——

3 October 2022: questions about parliamentary work

On 3 October 2022, The Australian published an article titled “ALP MPs condemn leader’s work rate.”

The article reported criticism from unnamed Labor MPs about Mr Minns’ parliamentary activity before becoming leader. It stated that, during his first five years in Parliament, he had delivered 172 speeches, compared with 401 by Yasmin Catley and 363 by Jo Haylen. It also reported that he had served on one parliamentary committee during his first two terms and attended 55 per cent of that committee’s meetings.

One former Labor MP was quoted as saying:

“As an MP, he was shocking. He was just biding his time to become leader.”

Another reportedly said:

“He was not across the detail. He didn’t seem to be doing too much.”

The article also included a defence of Mr Minns from another Labor source, who said the criticism shouldn’t be given much credence. (?)

I read the article through the lens of my own documented experience. I had repeatedly asked my local MP to examine detailed evidence concerning SIRA, SafeWork NSW and the WHS / workers compensation system. I had provided a box file of records to his electorate office. Yet I had no evidence that those records had been substantively examined or used to pursue accountability.

——

10 October 2022: World Mental Health Day

On 10 October 2022—World Mental Health Day—I wrote directly to Mr Minns, the Kogarah electorate office and others.

I expressed anger and distress about the failure to respond meaningfully to what I had reported. I also questioned the contrast between public statements about workplace safety and my experience as one of his constituents.

A public statement attributed to Mr Minns said:

“But they all deserve a government that listens to their concerns and takes action.”

My response was:

“As a constituent in your electorate, I banged on the door trying to have you listen for six months.”

Another of his public posts, responding to the Broderick Review, stated:

“We all need to do better and make sure that we’re making every possible effort to make the NSW Parliament a safe workplace.”

Those words expressed an important principle. My question was why the same principle didn’t appear to extend to a constituent reporting serious psychosocial hazards, regulatory failures and escalating risk.

In another public post, Mr Minns stated:

“No one should face what these workers face every day.

No workers compensation. No leave. No access to fair rates and conditions.”

My written response explained that workers compensation protections already existed in law, but my contention was that they hadn’t been implemented or enforced in my case.

I wrote:

“I asked for assistance for compliance to ensure the attached legally binding agreement was implemented. That’s all.”

Whatever view is taken of the distressed language in my emails, that sentence captures the essential request.

——

The acknowledgement I received

The Office of the Leader of the Opposition sent an automated acknowledgement:

“Your email is important to us, please be patient while we address your concerns. You will receive a response in due course, if appropriate.”

The documents contain the acknowledgements. They don’t contain a substantive response from Mr Minns addressing the evidence, the Injury Management Plan, the conduct of the regulators or my requests for assistance.

——

11 October 2022: one request, stated plainly

On 11 October 2022, I wrote again to the electorate office.

I asked whether other constituents were treated as I had been when they visited the office seeking help. I repeated that I required assistance concerning the financial harm and the entitlements that had been withheld.

Again, I reduced the issue to its core:

“I asked for assistance for compliance to ensure the attached legally binding agreement was implemented. That’s all.”

——

14 October 2022: documenting the full pattern

On 14 October 2022, I sent a detailed chronology to Mr Minns, the Kogarah electorate office and The Australian.

The email was titled:

“Evidence of my repeated attempts for Mr. Minns to listen to me as a constituent and what ultimately happened”

It traced my approaches from 15 October 2021, through November and December 2021, January and February 2022, March and April 2022, and the crisis I experienced in May.

By then, this was no longer simply a request for help. It was also a record showing how many times help had been requested.

——

What these records establish

These documents verify something fundamental: I repeatedly asked my local state MP for help. I identified the agencies involved. I described the risks. I supplied documentary evidence. I asked for a meeting. I asked for regulatory accountability. I asked for implementation of the Injury Management Plan and a safe return to the work I had never left.

My distress wasn’t hidden. Neither was the escalating financial danger.

The language in some of my emails was raw because I was writing from inside an unfolding crisis. It should be read in that context. Distressed communication isn’t evidence that the underlying concerns are unworthy of examination. Often, it’s evidence of what prolonged exposure to institutional inaction can do to a person.

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Listening must mean more than acknowledging receipt

Political leaders frequently say that every person deserves a government that listens.

See this as a prime example: http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-social-media-post-i-saw-on-29-april.html

Listening, however, isn’t an automated acknowledgement. It isn’t accepting a box of documents and leaving the person who supplied them unable to determine whether anyone has examined them. It isn’t making public statements about workplace safety while a constituent reporting workplace harm remains unheard.

Genuine listening requires engagement, transparent communication and appropriate action. It also requires respect. I didn’t feel respected by the office of my local MP for Kogarah, Chris Minns. At all. 

I’ve worked honourably at ACU for approximately two decades. I asked to be kept safe. I asked for my existing Injury Management Plan to be implemented. I asked to return to my substantive work with appropriate safeguards. I asked that the regulators responsible for protecting injured workers be held accountable for their conduct.

Above all, I asked my local representative to listen.

The written record shows how often I asked.*

Source: contemporaneous record of events - Documents 539-540.

*My story has plenty of posts regarding the Kogarah Electorate Office of my local member. Readers can go back to 15 October 2021 onwards. There’s also an entire series titled Notice After Notice. 

All this could have been avoided if there was some integrity, honesty, empathy, work ethic, authentic leadership, common human decency and respect for constituents from my elected representative. 

I learned the hard way about “politics” and why our votes matter come election time. 

⸻

Reference

Maddison, M. (2022, 3 October). “ALP MPs condemn leader’s work rate.” The Australian. Gale OneFile: News.