Social media profiles of injured worker’s young daughter monitored by private investigations company

A surveillance company contracted by Fire and Rescue NSW’s insurer looked through a 15-year-old girl’s social media profiles as part of an investigation into her father’s working capacity, a parliamentary inquiry has heard.

Joined by his daughter Lillian and wife Sarah, Matthew U’Brien, who spent 27 years working for NSW Police, Fire and Rescue NSW, and the NSW Resources Regulator, said he discovered evidence of the private investigations company as a redacted receipt buried in thousands of pages of documents.

The U’Briens appeared during a hearing of the inquiry considering the government’s proposed reforms of the state’s workers compensation scheme on Tuesday. Several workers who had suffered psychological injuries provided evidence during the at-times emotional hearing, detailing how their trauma had been exacerbated by the “adversarial” system.

As part of her evidence, Sarah said her husband’s condition worsened during his time in the workers compensation scheme, describing the impact on her family as “catastrophic”.

“We had a surveillance company contracted by Fire and Rescue NSW and [insurer] EML, and they looked at a 15-year-old’s social media profiles to try and find out what capacity her father may have,” Sarah U’Brien told the hearing. “I find that that’s child abuse in any other language, except, apparently not in workers compensation.”

The desktop surveillance report looked through her “personal accounts on social media”, Lillian said.

A Fire & Rescue NSW spokesman said: “Fire and Rescue NSW has not engaged surveillance companies and does not undertake workers compensation investigations.”

“FRNSW firmly believes in transparency, ethical conduct, and the protection of individual privacy.”

EML was also approached for comment.

Discovery of the private investigation company’s receipt through a freedom of information request sent Matthew into a spiral, with Lillian telling the inquiry on one day, her father’s paranoia about a car tailing saw him taking “every back road” because of the “distress and fear”.

“My family and I will forever carry the pain and impact that this system has caused,” she said.

“However, this is an opportunity to ensure no family or child will ever experience the weight and suffering of a scheme that systemically functions on coercion, negligence and abuse of the individuals and families they fail to support.”

The government’s contentious reform of the workers compensation scheme has been stuck in limbo while the upper house inquiry considers the bill. Treasurer Daniel Mookhey’s plans to significantly lift the threshold for injured workers to obtain long-term payments has been lashed by critics.

After meeting with Work Health and Safety Minister Sophie Cotsis after the election, Sarah U’Brien said she could not see “any of our conversation, any of our experience, any of our pain” in the government’s proposed bill.

She described the plan to double the Whole Person Impairment (WPI) level, the threshold workers need to meet to receive long-term payments, as “barbarism” and accusing Mookhey of being “intentionally blind”.

“I used to go to a PTSD group with other first responders and military people … the NSW people in there were nowhere near 30 per cent. I can tell you now they lived lives of dysfunction,” added Matthew.

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