When life falls apart

Life doesn’t always work out the way you plan. In the ’80s and ’90s, Antoinette Colbran and her husband Richard were living the life – a house on Sydney’s lower north shore, a holiday home, European trips, a boat and regular car upgrades. Their work in the medico-legal business of workers’ compensation was going great guns.

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But when the then NSW premier, Bob Carr, overhauled the workers’ compensation laws, limiting the amount of compensation and changing other rules in the early 2000s, their business faltered overnight.

The couple lost their holiday house, investment properties and their home.

“People asked us how could we lose that much, but you do lose that much when your income stops. And if it stops dead, that’s what happens,” says Colbran. And that’s how things turned out 12 years ago.

From that business, Colbran took a part that was unaffected by the change in the workers’ comp laws, which meant she could provide expert witnesses as an independent basic service. She continues that work today.

“When we lost the business and everything that went with it, I went into deep shock and anger. We were told we had to sell the house we were living in. We sold it commercially – but you sell it at the rate on the market and you’re in a hurry, so you do it at a loss.

“That happened with our main home and two investment properties – and life changed dramatically at that point.”

The circumstances that came out of left field and took away the Colbrans’ livelihood has something in common with what many business people have faced post-Covid.

“We didn’t have a lot of notice, and suddenly everything spiralled down,” she says.

Colbran says she would have found it more difficult if she hadn’t always been in the workforce.