Monday Muses ~ the storm clouds are gathering! (part 2) (a)

What an interesting reaction Monday Muses ~ the storm clouds are gathering! (part 2) received. It was interesting to watch workers compensation industry professionals from all parts of the system and from various parts of the world “pop in”. I can only imagine the conversations that went on because none of the “lookers” contacted me. I am aware of law firms looking at what may be possible in regards to the requirements of the Australian Commission of Human Rights. also the Discrimination, reasonable adjustments and workplace injury: Butterworth v Independence Australia Services (Human Rights) [2015] VCAT 2056 (22 December 2015) 

Even though the time for submissions has closed for the McDougall Review I believed it was a requirement for this important committee to also have the information; hence I apologised for adding a very late submission of extra information.

I suspect this coming week will also be interesting because of the conversation that someone else started last year when a Confidential Review that I authored was used in a manner that it was never intended to be used for. The conversation that started from the leaking of the document has taken another step forward. For now it is a matter of wait to see what happens -I suspect that there will be more water cooler conversations that will go around me and that some will be very uncomfortable in regards to questions they will be required to answer. I have provided as much information as I have to provide, I simply cannot produce what I have been asking for and never provided with.

I do know that what may come out will have many of you questioning my judgement, however at the time the collective wisdom was to move forward whilst at the same time do all that was possible to protect the injured worker community. I admit here that I did everything that was possible to protect Craig’s Table and to protect myself, Craig’s Table was then and still is surrounded by people of strong ethics and strong belief in all that Craig’s Table has and can deliver.

Where to from here?

Great question, first we need to remember a few things.??????

On the 31st March I will be speaking at the Informa Workers compensation Conference and introducing Injured Worker Well-Being Week May 31st-June 4th 2021. The aim of IWWBW is to start the shift away from all the negative connotations that come with an employment injury towards establishing an on-line library of positive and helpful information for everyone within the injured worker community. (even how to breathe through a anxiety attack)             

But wait there is more. ??

Last week I spoke with a long-time friend and inspiration who reminded me that I needed to watch Ronni Kahn Food Fighter Ronni said it was important to bring all the stakeholders together to address the issue of food waste. Ronni as per normal was incredibly correct, regardless of the “need” all the stakeholders have to be in the same room working on resolving ways to address the challenge (ego’s left at the door).

This took me back to World Congress 5 in 2001 held at the Adelaide Convention Centre. The leading workers compensation authorities from around the world gathered to listen and learn from each other. It was among the most amazing days within my role as a community advocate for the injured worker community. I met so many of the international mentors who gifted me their time and their knowing that shaped what became Craig’s Table. I remember sitting with (the late) Wilhelm Johanson at a small coffee shop in one of the Adelaide lane ways and mapping out what was possible, but mostly I remember how Wilhelm simply sat and listened and encouraged me to keep going.

Buoyed, inspired, encouraged by Ronni Kahn and then reading Peter Sharman   MISSION OBFUSCATION Is there a consensus about the vision and purpose of worker’s compensation schemes? I wondered just what it would be like to first hold such a Zero Waste Forum within the workers compensation industry and second just who the stakeholders actually are: thus far I have come up with 20 different stakeholders.  The bigger question that started this was “what does the employment injury landscape really look like?” There is a growing number of questions and a growing number of stakeholders who have (to the best of my knowledge) not ever been invited to discuss the employment injury landscape.

The current iteration of workers compensation arrived in Australia in the mid 1980’s; just as with hair styles the process has grown and altered many times since then.

I understand that many Reviews and Parliamentary inquires have take place over time creating more complex, more dogmatic, more expensive, more regulated, more restrictions, top heavey process that excludes the very people the system was designed to support and has no ability to engage at the grassroots level.

Many stakeholders that need to have input and oversight and carriage were not all involved at that time. It would be a safe assumption that the vast majority of employment injured stakeholders would have nil to scant knowledge of Social Protection and Human Rights Convention 121 .  Nor would the majority know that safe work australia informs all of us that sustaining an employment injury is not beneficial for either employer or employee. Likewise most would not know that Australia has 11 different jurisdictions within the employment injury industry.

What I do know is that the more questions I pose to myself, the more I read the Bancroft site and the  submission to the United Nations the more I realise just how fragmented the employment injury landscape actually is here in Australia.

Start of solution stop reading for a while, go for coffee.

As a result of many coffee’s; I have come up with a place to start. Hence this week I will be sending a letter along with supporting documentation to the one person who in my opinion is the correct person to start the required conversation. I will go as far as recommending that the National Zero Waste within the Employment Injured industry be set for the 1st June 2022. (International Injured Workers Day) (I admit I would prefer 1st June 2021, however there is a lot of information that needs to be compiled and the (non) industry stakeholders will also need time to understand the reason they need to be involved and establish what for many of them may/will be their first position in regards to the employment injury industry.

I wrote the words below for a major Review, it has always been Craig's Table belief that the vast majority of employment injured people have the right the responsibility and the real ability to return to the open workplace well within any prescribed time.

As Gimli says for now it is just a matter of keep breathing.

Over many years I have written many important letters, the challenge in this letter is to frame it is such a manner that outlines all the reasons that have formed and the (international) supporting documentation, include the list of employment injury stakeholders who need to assist in building The Marksman’s better mouse trap. 

It may seem strange but even with as much angst and as many sleepless nights the person who leaked the confidential document created, had that not happened the documentation that I have been asking since the start of 2017 would not have the chance to be found; nor would I have been pushed past my own level of tolerance to now arrive at the start of this next journey. So to whoever it was and for what ever reason I am saying thank you simply because even though I believe your intention was to discredit Craig’s Table and myself neither Craig’s Table or myself have gone away.

Now best I do the dinner dishes and then water the garden before night truly falls.

Yours in service

Rosemary