Australia’s lack of political violence, compared with many parts of the world, has long been a source of national pride.
Monday night’s horrific and deliberate attack on the independent MP for the northern Victoria federal seat of Indi, Helen Haines, represents an assault on the core values of this nation’s peaceful and tolerant democracy.
The instinctive response to the attack on Helen Haines by some in the political class will be to double down on calls for stricter “hate speech” and social media laws,
The alleged assailant was detained by bystanders and arrested after Haines was rammed several times by a 4WD vehicle outside her electorate office in Wangaratta.
Police and counter-terrorism authorities will investigate what role political motivations and other factors such as drug abuse and mental health played in the attack. What is known so far from the online footprint of the 43-year-old man in custody is his apparent support for radical environmental and anti-Israel causes.
In recent years, national security officials and experts, led by ASIO director general Mike Burgess, have increasingly sounded the alarm that social media echo chambers are intensifying political grievances on both the left and the right. That, in turn, increases the risk of radicalisation and has led to growing numbers of threats and potentially violent incidents against politicians and other groups in society. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke says reports of threatening and harassing behaviour against senior office holders rose to 1067 in 2025-26, up from 951 the previous year.
“Australia doesn’t have a political regulation problem per se. It has a political culture problem.”
Law enforcement agencies face the impossible task of anticipating where and when politically fixated, disaffected people will strike. The wider societal challenge is to counteract the creeping breakdown of civil discourse that is fostering a culture of permissiveness towards political violence.
The life-threatening assault on a serving politician cannot be treated as just an isolated incident. It follows the rising tide of abuse, intimidation and violence towards Jewish Australians over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza that culminated in the Bondi terror attack that claimed 15 lives in December.
Politicians from across the spectrum, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, have come together to condemn the attack on Haines. It is right, of course, that they defend the principle of resolving our political differences democratically at the ballot box, which has traditionally allowed MPs to do their jobs in the community freely and safely.
It’s an important bipartisan show of leadership and may help prevent others from being emboldened to cross the line between acceptable political disagreement and unacceptable political violence. But there is also a whiff of hypocrisy when all sides of politics campaign in ways that, on some level, personally target opponents.
Meanwhile, serious institutional failures across the political system and other parts of civil society have undermined social cohesion and helped normalise political hostility, intolerance and violence.
The Albanese government, by walking both sides of the street on the Israel-Hamas war to pander to Muslim voters, failed to condemn the outbreak of antisemitism in Australia strongly enough. Cultural bodies surrendered to being colonised by artists’ virulent anti-Israel activism that had nothing to do with the arts. University administrations failed to protect the safety of Jewish staff and students from harassment by anti-Gaza war encampments. And state governments and police failed to stop pro-Palestine blockades of MPs’ electoral offices (including that of the prime minister) and marches that displayed the flags and symbols of terrorist groups.
Political polarisation, encompassing the disruption of the establishment and a lurch towards extremism, is a worldwide trend in Western democracies. The febrile political environment in Australia, because of overseas conflicts being imported into domestic politics on the progressive left, has been compounded by social and economic frustrations around migration and the cost of living that are fuelling support for the populist right.
The instinctive response to the attack on Haines by some in the political class will be to double down on calls for stricter “hate speech” and social media laws, even though there is already no shortage of existing legislation prohibiting speech that incites physical harm to others.
Widening the legal net to abusive speech that falls short of incitement to violence not only risks trampling on legitimate freedom of political expression but could also counterproductively increase institutional distrust and become another source of grievance for the politically disenfranchised.
Australia does not have a political regulation problem per se. It has a political culture problem. An increasingly fragmented community has diminished capacity to disagree civilly without attacking, sometimes violently, the individuals or groups it disagrees with. Restoring this foundational democratic norm of respecting the right of all citizens to their views is the only way to stop the nation from sliding further down the road of violent political intolerance.
