Who We Are and Why We Exist
Injured Workers Queensland is an independent research, advocacy, and public education platform dedicated to the rights, dignity, and wellbeing of psychologically injured workers in Queensland, Australia.
We are not a law firm. We are not a government agency. We are not affiliated with any employer, insurer, union, or political party. We are an independent platform founded by a legally qualified academic and psychologically injured worker who has experienced the failures of this system from the inside — and who has the credentials, the research tools, and the public commitment to document those failures, analyse them, and push for the reforms that Queensland’s injured workers deserve.
Psychologically injured workers in Queensland are too often left fighting on two fronts at once — against the employer whose conduct caused their harm, and against WorkCover Queensland, the government body that was supposed to be on their side but too often is not. This platform exists because that double failure is real, it is systemic, and it is not acceptable.
The Problem We Address
When a worker suffers a psychological injury at work and lodges a compensation claim, they enter a system that is structurally weighted against them from the beginning.
Their employer arrives at the claims process with vast financial resources, HR professionals, legal advisors, and the institutional authority to construct an official account of events that shields its managers and supervisors from accountability. WorkCover Queensland — the government-owned statutory body established under the Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 2003 (Qld) to administer Queensland’s workers’ compensation scheme — too often accepts that account, rejecting psychological injury claims at high rates and invoking the reasonable management action defence in ways many workers experience as one-sided, predetermined, and deeply unfair.
Against all of that stands a worker who is already psychologically injured, emotionally depleted, and financially precarious — without legal knowledge, without professional support, and without anyone in their corner. Most workers’ compensation law firms cannot assist at this early statutory stage, because the contingency model that governs workers’ compensation practice only becomes financially viable once a claim is accepted. The worker faces the most consequential stage of the entire process entirely alone.
The result is a serious and structural imbalance of power that this platform intends to name, document, and address.
Our Founder
Dr Manjo Oyson is a Queensland solicitor, a New Zealand barrister and solicitor, a Philippine lawyer, and a full-time permanent law lecturer and researcher who has taught at an Australian university for over twelve years. He holds a PhD and a Masters of Law with Honours, both from the University of Auckland. He is admitted to practise in three jurisdictions and has over two decades of legal experience spanning private practice, academic research, and community advocacy.
He is also an immigrant. And a psychologically injured worker.
Dr Oyson founded Injured Workers Queensland because he experienced firsthand the systemic failures this platform intends to address — rejected claims, unanswered correspondence, medical evidence from his own treating practitioners dismissed or mischaracterised, and a complaints process that produced weeks of institutional silence. He was able to navigate that system because he had the legal training, the professional standing, and the academic expertise to identify exactly where it was failing him and exactly what he could do about it.
He is acutely aware that most injured workers do not have those advantages. They face the same system he faced — but without the tools to fight back. The system counts on that. And this platform was built because it should not be allowed to.
Dr Oyson founded Injured Workers Queensland not from bitterness but from conviction — the conviction that democratic societies require citizens who are willing to use their skills, their voice, and their platform in the public interest. The conviction that research which never leaves the academy changes nothing on its own. And the conviction that every injured Queensland worker — including the thousands who do not have a law degree, a PhD, or the financial security to sustain a long fight — deserves someone in their corner who does.
Our Mission
Injured Workers Queensland intends to advance the rights, voices, and wellbeing of psychologically injured workers in Queensland through independent legal research, public advocacy, community education, and sustained democratic engagement.
We believe every worker — regardless of background, visa status, language, or legal knowledge — deserves a workers’ compensation system that is fair, transparent, humane, and genuinely accountable to the people it was created to serve. We believe employer conduct that causes psychological harm must be named, examined, and held to account. And we believe that public institutions — including WorkCover Queensland — must answer to the people they were created to serve.
What We Intend to Do
Injured Workers Queensland is built around five interconnected commitments that together define our approach to the problem of psychological injury in Queensland workplaces.
Research and Publication
We intend to produce independent, peer-reviewed legal and socio-legal scholarship examining psychological injury in Queensland workplaces, the operation and misapplication of the reasonable management action defence, the specific claims handling shortcomings of WorkCover Queensland, and the structural barriers to access to justice that prevent injured workers from obtaining fair outcomes.
Our research agenda includes doctrinal legal analysis of the Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 2003 (Qld), empirical socio-legal research drawing on the documented experiences of injured Queensland workers, comparative analysis of workers’ compensation frameworks in other Australian jurisdictions, and administrative law scholarship examining the procedural obligations of statutory decision-makers.
We intend to publish our findings in peer-reviewed academic journals, submit them to parliamentary committees and law reform bodies, contribute accessible commentary to public interest media platforms including The Conversation, and present at academic and professional conferences. Research that stays inside academic journals changes nothing on its own. Getting findings into the hands of the people who can act on them is as important as producing those findings in the first place.
Documentation
We intend to collect the experiences of psychologically injured Queensland workers — carefully, confidentially, and with genuine respect for every person who trusts us with their story. Worker experiences are not merely human interest material. They are evidence — evidence of systemic patterns that aggregate data cannot always reveal, evidence of the human cost of institutional failure, and evidence that strengthens the empirical foundation of our research and the persuasive force of our advocacy.
We will handle every submission with the care it deserves. We will explain clearly how information is collected, stored, and used. We will never share identifying information without explicit consent. And we will treat the trust that workers place in us as the most important asset this platform holds.
Advocacy
We intend to pursue reform through every legitimate democratic channel available to us.
We will submit formal petitions to the Queensland Parliament calling for independent review of WorkCover Queensland’s psychological injury claims handling processes and the legislative framework that governs them. We will write directly to members of Parliament at both state and federal level — particularly those with oversight responsibilities for industrial relations, workers’ compensation, and the conduct of statutory bodies. We will engage the Queensland Ombudsman and the Office of Industrial Relations with documented evidence of systemic failures. We will work alongside unions and worker advocacy organisations who share our commitment to fairness and accountability. We will engage with journalists and media organisations covering workplace issues, mental health, and public sector accountability. And we will engage with GPs, psychiatrists, psychologists, and other health practitioners whose patients have been failed by the system.
We treat democratic engagement not as a last resort but as a first principle. In a functioning democracy, public institutions that fail the people they were created to serve must be held to account through the mechanisms that exist for precisely that purpose.
Education
We intend to provide plain-language, accurate, and accessible public education about the rights of psychologically injured workers in Queensland. This will include resources explaining how the workers’ compensation claims process works, what the reasonable management action defence means and how it is applied, what options are available to workers whose claims have been rejected, what the external review process involves and how to navigate it, and what democratic tools are available to workers who believe the system has failed them.
We are committed to making this information available in community languages and through channels that reach workers who would not otherwise have access to it — including migrant workers, temporary visa holders, casual and contract workers, and workers without legal knowledge or financial resources. Information that is only accessible to the educated and the legally literate is not truly accessible at all.
Our Specific Focus on WorkCover Queensland
Injured Workers Queensland intends to name WorkCover Queensland directly and specifically as a subject of our investigation and advocacy — not because we approach it with personal hostility, but because it is the institution through which Queensland’s workers’ compensation scheme is administered, and because the evidence suggests that its administration of that scheme has produced systemic outcomes that are neither legally defensible nor consistent with the remedial purposes of the legislation that established it.
WorkCover Queensland is a government-owned statutory body performing a public function with public money. It has published commitments to responsiveness, transparency, integrity, and accountability. It has statutory obligations under the Workers’ Compensation and Rehabilitation Act 2003 (Qld) and ethical obligations under Queensland’s public sector framework. When those commitments and obligations are not met — when claims are rejected without adequate engagement with the evidence, when correspondence goes unanswered, when complaints processes fail to meet their own published standards, and when the reasonable management action defence is applied so broadly that it functions as a presumption in favour of the employer — that failure is a public matter. It belongs in the public record. And it belongs in the academic literature.
We intend to put it there.
Our Broader Lens — Employer Conduct
Psychological injury does not begin with a WorkCover claim. It begins in a workplace. It begins with a manager’s decision, a supervisor’s conduct, an organisational culture that tolerates harm, or a disciplinary process deployed as a weapon rather than a legitimate management tool.
Employers who cause psychological harm to their workers do not typically acknowledge that harm. They defend against it — shielding their managers and supervisors through HR documentation, institutional narratives, and the professional expertise to frame harmful conduct in the language of reasonable management practice. They do this because acknowledging managerial wrongdoing is simultaneously an admission of institutional responsibility — financial, legal, and reputational — that employers have powerful incentives to avoid.
Injured Workers Queensland intends to examine that conduct, name it clearly, and hold it to the standard the law requires and common decency demands.
How We Communicate
Research that sits unread on a library shelf helps no one. Evidence that never reaches the people most affected by it changes nothing. That is why Injured Workers Queensland is committed to communicating its findings, its concerns, and its reform agenda across every channel available.
For the academic and legal community, we will publish peer-reviewed research in law and socio-legal journals and contribute to law reform discussions through formal submissions and parliamentary engagement.
For the broader public, we will write accessible commentary for general media outlets and public interest platforms including The Conversation, contribute to broadcast and print media covering workplace issues and mental health, and ensure that the Queensland public has access to accurate, clear information about how the workers’ compensation system operates in their name.
For the community, we will engage directly with workers, unions, GPs, psychologists, community legal centres, and multicultural organisations — translating key materials into community languages and making ourselves available to workers who have nowhere else to turn.
For democratic institutions, we will submit formal petitions to the Queensland Parliament, write to elected representatives at state and federal level, and engage with parliamentary committees conducting inquiries relevant to workers’ compensation and public sector accountability.
Our Values
Accuracy. Everything we publish will be carefully sourced, appropriately qualified, and open to correction. Our credibility is the foundation of everything we do and we will protect it rigorously.
Independence. We will not accept funding from government agencies, statutory insurers, law firms, or employers. Our independence is non-negotiable. It is what makes our findings trustworthy and our advocacy credible.
Inclusivity. This platform is for every psychologically injured worker in Queensland — regardless of background, visa status, language, occupation, or legal knowledge. We will make particular efforts to reach workers who face compounded disadvantage and who are least likely to have access to the information and support they need.
Dignity. Every worker who shares their story with us will be treated with respect, confidentiality, and genuine gratitude. Their experience is not data. It is evidence of a human life affected by institutional failure — and we handle it accordingly.
Accountability. We will hold employers, statutory insurers, and public institutions to the standards they have publicly declared. We will hold ourselves to the same standard — being transparent about our methods, our funding, our affiliations, and our limitations.
Courage. We will say what the evidence shows, name what needs to be named, and pursue what needs to be pursued — even when doing so is uncomfortable, contested, or inconvenient for powerful institutions.
A Note on Migrant and Temporary Workers
Many of the workers most vulnerable to the failures this platform addresses are migrant workers, temporary visa holders, and workers without legal knowledge or financial resources. Many do not know what rights they have if they are injured at work in Queensland. Many are afraid to speak up — afraid of their employer, afraid of consequences for their visa, afraid of being disbelieved.
This platform is for them too. We intend to provide accurate information about the rights of workers in Queensland regardless of visa status, make that information available in community languages, and connect workers with confidential legal and community advice through channels they can actually access.
This campaign will never voluntarily share your story or identifying information with immigration authorities. Your privacy will be protected. Your trust will be honoured.
A Note on Legal Advice
Injured Workers Queensland is a research and advocacy platform. Nothing on this website constitutes legal advice, and nothing we publish should be relied upon as a substitute for advice from a qualified legal practitioner about your specific situation.
If you need legal advice about a workers’ compensation claim, we encourage you to contact a community legal centre, Legal Aid Queensland, or a solicitor with experience in workers’ compensation matters.
A Note on Confidentiality
We understand that many workers who visit this platform are in vulnerable situations — dealing with active claims, active employment relationships, or concerns about their immigration status. We take confidentiality seriously.
We will explain clearly how any information you share with us is collected, stored, and used. We will never share identifying information without your explicit consent. If you are concerned about any aspect of your privacy before sharing your experience with us, please contact us directly and we will answer your questions before you submit anything.
Contact Us
We welcome contact from injured workers, health practitioners, legal professionals, journalists, researchers, union representatives, community organisations, and anyone with a genuine interest in the rights of psychologically injured workers in Queensland.
📩 info@injuredworkersqld.org 🌐 www.injuredworkersqld.org
A Closing Word
Injured Workers Queensland was founded from personal experience but built for a public purpose.
Every worker who has been failed by this system — who was told their suffering did not count, whose claim was rejected without genuine engagement, whose employer’s account was accepted over theirs, who tried to find legal help and was turned away — deserves a platform, a voice, and a path forward.
This is ours. Together.
Injured Workers Queensland is an independent platform operated by Dr Manuel Jose Oyson III. It is not affiliated with WorkCover Queensland, WorkSafe Queensland, or any university, government agency, law firm, employer, or political party. This website is operated pursuant to the democratic rights of Queensland citizens, including the implied freedom of political communication recognised by the High Court of Australia.
Research. Advocacy. Reform. For every Queensland worker.