The corruption in the circumstance which inspired our origin is functionally similar to police / prosecutor corruption, albeit by a less powerful authority (complaint handlers), and with a different underlying legislative incentive for them to get these "false convictions". We can't talk about the details specific to our case right now, so instead we'll explain the gist of it using only public resources that anyone could have looked up.

This is the story of Inspector Robinson v Macquarie University.

In 2003 there was an armed robbery at Macquarie University. The bandits held up an armored car at gun point and made off with $22k. They took the money and nobody got hurt. Upon investigation, the University was charged with contravention of the Occupational Health and Safety Act for failing to provide employee training in relation to this scenario. The University pleaded guilty to this charge and was sentenced $52k in civil penalties (more than double what the armed robbers took).

In other words, the university was robbed twice.

Now I don't know about you, but I find it pretty obtuse to call an armed robbery a workplace "accident'. Its really more of a workplace intentional. But thats what the law is and how the courts have ruled. Given such an unhinged regulatory environment, in which its considered reasonable to rob the robbery victim, is it any wonder that organisations are motivated to avoid safety violations at all costs (even if it means violating other laws)?

The unavoidable truth is every society has to face the sometimes contradicting of wants of safety and justice, and Australian society has faced it by making regulations which off load it on private entities by demanding they afford both while threatening them with penalties if they fail to provide either. Faced with this unwinnable situation, the private entities end up pretending to provide both while faking whichever one makes more sense to fake.

The penalties under the Workplace Health and Safety act are so fucking scary that the risk calculation weighs heavily towards faking the fairness part of "internal investigations." On top of the severity of penalties, Safework NSW has sharper teeth than other regulators. It can prosecute violations that occur in its jurisdiction directly. In contrast, neither the Ombudsman nor ICAC can do that. Furthermore, an organisation is orders of magnitude more likely to get away with covering up a breach of its own obscure internal procedures than it is if it tried to cover up the physical injury that might happen if they make any mistakes in dismissing an allegation. The inherently confidential nature of misconduct processes makes it very easy to keep evidence of wrongdoing hidden, whereas a physically injured person always has their physical injury as evidence of it.

Multiply these risk factors for breaching either obligation by the probability of getting caught doing it and its pretty obvious whats going to happen. Safety is always chosen over justice, everyone accused is guilty no matter the facts, maladministration by complaint investigators is tolerated and covered up so long as it favours the "safe" outcome.

That's our origin story, broadly speaking.

Don't just take our word for it. A credible organisation led by a (now former) professor has published similar observations about pervasive institutional rot in the university system fueled substantially by bad legislative incentives.