Stop the Political Theatre. Start the Royal Commission.

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 targets that force them to deny rather than deliver support. Of suicides too. And she names the truth few are brave enough to admit: this system is not built to heal. It is built to break.

Every political leader knows this by now. Every inquiry has exposed it. Every audit has documented it. And still, they choose to do nothing.

The Review Economy of Harm

We live in an economy of reviews. Each time the outcry grows too loud yet another inquiry, another “special report,” another “lessons learned” document that lands in a minister’s in-tray and dies quietly there.

The truth? The review culture has become a containment strategy. It gives the appearance of accountability while the very same actors insurers, consultants, and bureaucrats continue their revolving door of contracts, press statements, and damage control. They even return to different jobs of authority within the system. It goes around and around.

The public is told the system is being “repaired.” It isn’t. It’s being repackaged. The same human suffering is wrapped in new branding, and taxpayers foot the bill for more “reform” that reforms nothing. It is destroying families and has done for decades yet no political party has ever been brave enough to tackle it head first. There are always compromises. To whom: Insurers? Businesses? What about the injured? Do you go to hospital anywhere else and get told you have to compromise?

When Care Becomes Experimentation

What we are witnessing now borders on medical experimentation. Certainly it is known within the system itself that some injured are being given medical procedures that do not work, that will lead to further medical procedures and so it goes on.

Injured people are being pushed through assessment loops designed to exhaust them into withdrawal.

Psychological injuries are being tested, measured, and monetised as if they were lab trials. We have even seen photographs of an injured worker with a psychological injury being recorded with a camera positioned directly into their face, up close and personal. That's abuse.

These are not patients — they are data points in a profit model system. And it is state-sanctioned.

When you hear that insurers are receiving bonuses while injured people are dying by suicide, when you read about some psychiatrists issuing fraudulent diagnoses to protect scheme sustainability, when you see the government rewarding non-performance with new contracts — it’s not “mismanagement.” It’s a system working exactly as designed.

Enough Inquiries. We Need a Royal Commission.

This is not just a policy failure. It is a moral failure. The time for polite consultation papers is over.

We need a Royal Commission into the psychological abuse of injured workers not another “special inquiry” stacked with insiders, but an independent national reckoning with the human, financial, and ethical collapse of Australia’s workers’ compensation systems.

Because if even one case worker inside an insurer can see the abuse, what excuse do our political leaders have for turning away?

Reflection Questions for Readers

• How many more inquiries do we need before we admit the system itself is the harm?

• Who benefits from endless reviews while injured people spiral into despair?

• When will compassion become a political priority, not a PR tactic?

Shattered may not be a a Hollywood production or of that skill set BUT we want to make sure no one can say, “We didn’t know.” You do know. Now it’s time to act.