THE GREAT PRETENDERS: Why Empathy Training Won’t Save the Workers' Compensation System , that is Built on Harm

The latest SIRA audit into QBE’s handling of workers’ compensation claims has been reported as a moment of accountability — a regulator stepping in, identifying gaps, and demanding improvements. insurancebusinessonline.com.au But anyone who has lived through this system, worked inside it, or studied its behaviour over the past decade knows the truth: This is not reform. This is a system circling the drain, and the audit reads like a controlled PR manoeuvre.

Why NSW’s slow economic growth is colliding with a workers’ compensation system built on chaos, commercial power, and political conflict & denial. The International Monetary Fund’s latest assessment of Australia landed with a thud: NSW now has the slowest-growing economy since the turn of the century. Financial services — including insurance — are one of the few strong engines underpinning the state’s fragile economic performance. At the same time, the NSW Government is attem

The Conflict of Interest Nobody Wants to Talk About When political systems fail, the pain is rarely theoretical. It shows up in empty fridges, overdue bills, and the quiet despair of families trying to survive a system that has stopped caring. And this week in NSW, we watched another round of that same theatre — complete with dire warnings for charities, small businesses, and families. But something was missing from the breathless commentary. Something big . Something obvious

And Is the Real Fear That Insurers Would Walk? For years, NSW has danced around one of the most urgent and obvious questions in the workers’ compensation system: Why won’t the government call a proper, independent review of claims management? We’ve had inquiries, audits, reports, parliamentary hearings, consultant summaries, and endless “stakeholder engagements.” But when it comes to the core engine of harm — claims management itself — the silence is deafening. Not hesitatio

What unfolded in NSW this week wasn’t just a political debate in the Parliament — it was a public unmasking of a system that no longer knows how to care. Over recent weeks, NSW has witnessed one of the most bruising and emotionally barren political debates in years. As the government pushed ahead with controversial reforms to the workers’ compensation system, the tone in Parliament became cold, combative, and shockingly devoid of care for the people whose lives depend on tha

Most parents don’t have time to follow every new bill in Parliament. But here’s something you do need to know, particularly if your child is new to the workforce. The NSW Government is trying to protect workers from harmful AI systems in places like Amazon warehouses — things like tracking toilet breaks, measuring every movement, and pushing people too hard. That’s a good thing. But here’s the part they don’t want you to notice: When someone gets injured at work, and it coul

How a government experiment inside the GIO became the global blueprint for claims-denial algorithms — and why every Australian needs to know. Most Australians have never heard of Colossus. But almost every injured person has felt its fingerprints. Colossus is the claims algorithm at the centre of one of the biggest insurance controversies of the last 30 years — a system that quietly reshaped how insurers value human injury, human pain, and human futures. And the part almost n

By the time this financial year ends on June 30, governments across Australia will have collected more than $1 trillion in taxes, fees and charges — a record for our country. It’s a staggering figure, especially at a time when so many families are struggling to make ends meet, and it raises a deeper question about what Australians are actually getting in return for that level of public revenue.Source: James Massola, “Over-governed, over-taxed and over-complicated — how Austra

How seven IT systems, disengaged scheme agents, and a blind transition created a disaster no one stopped. Icare's IT claims management program and implementation of Guidewire failed, not because of Guidewire the software, which is used all over the world, but because of Icare's management of the transformation program itself. Independent reviews have found the new claims model was rushed, it was more than that when you examine what happened around the data cleaning required

Watch The Hon. Taylor Martin deliver his speech - Source NSW Parliament When the NSW Government’s workers’ compensation bill collapsed in Parliament this week, many celebrated. But anyone who has lived inside these systems knows the truth: The bill’s failure to achieve it's total objective of decimating psychological injured workers' within the scheme is not the victory. The real story is the iceberg beneath it. Because the problem isn’t one bad bill. It’s the entire dated ph

In Shattered , we spoke with a case worker inside one of the major insurers, someone who has seen, firsthand, the human cost of this system. Her experience is disturbing. She talks with quiet, steady, and devastating impact. How is this happening? She also talks about the abuse of the psychologically injured , people who entered the system seeking care, only to be met with suspicion, gaslighting, and punishment. She describes colleagues breaking down under the weight of targe

How a system that was meant to protect has become one of the most reviewed — and least reformed institutions in modern government. Reviews Without Repair If there’s one thing the NSW workers’ compensation system doesn’t lack, it’s reviews. Dozens of them, parliamentary inquiries, actuarial audits, independent reviews, Treasury investigations, and ministerial “resets.” And yet, here we are. More reports. More reviews. More harm. More changes - to do what? Lead to another inqui

Why did a seriously injured whistleblower — the very man who helped expose the failures inside NSW’s workers’ compensation system — have to find out about Treasurer Daniel Mookhey’s cruel reforms from his lawyer? That’s the telling point. No call. No care. No acknowledgment. Just silence from the Treasurer who once courted Chris McCann relentlessly when he needed his intelligence to expose the icare scandal — but who now cannot even be bothered to ensure psychological supp

Australia’s hidden workers’ compensation crisis is not a policy failure — it’s a moral one. For more than a century, Australians have believed that if you were injured at work, the system would protect you. That belief wasn’t naïve — it was part of the deal. You gave your labour. The nation guaranteed your safety net. But that promise has been broken — not by accident, not by inefficiency, but by design. And while governments keep the public calm with talk of “keeping premium

This post was prompted by a recent meeting we had with a senior executive inside the workers’ compensation system. In the middle of the discussion, he mentioned, almost casually that he had received death threats from members of the injured worker community. We were shocked, and said so. His response? “It goes with the territory.” No. It doesn’t. Violence is not “part of the job” it is a sign of a system in psychological collapse. We are also aware of reports of customer-faci

If this system was built to help you heal, it would be called Workers’ Recovery. But it isn’t. It’s called Workers’ Compensation in NSW — because it’s not about your health. It’s about money. For other people. Not you. Be warned.

Why the NSW government is still legislating a system it no longer understands and injured people are paying the price. Australia has already lived through Robodebt. The UK has already lived through the Post Office scandal. Both began with “data issues,” both were dismissed as administrative failures and both ended as human-rights tragedies. Workers’ compensation is now showing the same pattern of automation, denial, governance failure and system-level harm. The difference thi

These are not finished edits. There are no graphics. No colour grade. No carefully shaped narrative. And that is exactly why we’re releasing them now. With the NSW Public Accountability & Works Committee report on the Workers’ Compensation Amendment Bill now public, the people of NSW deserve to hear what has been said off-camera by those involved in shaping policy not only what appears in official statements or under parliamentary privilege. These two clips speak for themse

For more than a decade, NSW has not simply struggled to manage its workers’ compensation system it has administered a foreseeable harm event at scale . This is no longer a debate about “reform”, “efficiency”, or “sustainability”. It is long past that. It is now a question of legal, financial and moral liability . And the evidence is no longer technical or abstract. It is structural, documented, and cumulative. 1. The State knew the workers' compensation system was broken