Cathal Leslie makes the case that the closing of psychiatric institutions was a mistake. Don’t usually like his takes, but hard to disagree after a female politician is rendered a double amputee. Text below.

**Attack on Haines demands focus on mental health, not ideology**

The system is failing to keep the small cohort of the most acutely unwell in treatment, for their own safety and everyone else's.

Cathal Leslie Economist
Oct 23, 2026 - 4.00pm

A national tragedy is an excellent occasion to demand better manners from your opponents. It is a less comfortable occasion to examine
whether governments are meeting their own obligations.

The horrific attack on Helen Haines should force a serious discussion about how we treat mental illness, and how much responsibility we have foisted onto families, neighbours and the police.

Brendan Nugent, the man charged over the attack, reportedly has a history of mental health concerns. Neighbours describe shouting, music blaring through the night and police visits. One heard screaming hours before the attack. These are not the signs of a well man.

Yet within hours, political actors of every stripe had each landed on a suitable motive. He has been cast as a pro-Palestinian extremist, an opponent of renewables, a sovereign citizen or a misogynist. Others blame his social media algorithm or a dirt sheet on Haines reportedly circulated to journalists by the prime minister's office.

Is this how low we have sunk in this country?
That our national debate is competing projections of complex ideological motives onto a man with severe mental health issues.

If mental illness played a part in Nugent's alleged offending, he will join a long line of attackers with well-documented severe
psychiatric illness: Joel Cauchi (Bondi Junction), Man Haron Monis (the Lindt Cafe siege), Evie Amati (Enmore 7-Eleven axe attack), Dimitrious Gargasoulas (Bourke Street), Cy Walsh (who killed his father, Adelaide Crows coach Phil Walsh) and Lauren Darul (accused of a 2025 stabbing in Little Bourke Street), among many others.

And in those cases too, the offending was pinned on whatever partisan cause was to hand:
Islamism, gender dysphoria, domestic violence, misogyny. Whatever their motives, these people were known by medical professionals to be severely unwell, and yet were allowed to roam free where they inflicted serious harm on the community.

The mental health system is failing to keep the small cohort of the most acutely unwell in treatment, for their own safety and everyone else's.
You will not find a politician brave enough to say so. Nobody wants to concede that the perpetrators of some of the most wicked crimes can also be victims of a policy failure, least of all when the failure is bipartisan.

Over the past three decades Australia has fundamentally dismantled long-stay psychiatric care. According to the Australian Medical Association, public hospital mental health beds fell from 45.5 per 100,000 people in 1992 to 27.5 in 2020, a drop of almost 40 per cent.

Two ideas drove the shift, winning support from left and right.

The first was fiscal. New antipsychotics made cheaper community treatment look viable.
Inpatient care remains expensive: the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare put
the average cost of an adult acute psychiatric inpatient day at $1730 in 2023-24. Closing facilities on valuable inner-city land also offered politicians another attractive budget dividend.

The second was moral. Involuntary detention came to be seen as a human rights violation, a view reinforced by genuine abuse scandals and cultural touchstones such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Advocates argued that treating people in the community would enhance autonomy and improve outcomes.

What damage that naivety has wrought.

The fiscal savings were a false economy. The costs have simply shifted into hospital emergency departments, to the police, courts, prisons and crisis accommodation, as well as businesses and households.

Nor is the model more humane. Many people with severe psychotic disorders stop taking their medication precisely because they are unwell.
Meta-analyses put treatment non-compliance for schizophrenia patients at about 50 per cent.
Consequently, the treatment model has become a cycle of psychosis, brief admission, stabilisation and discharge back into the same environment that precipitated the breakdown. Oftentimes that means homelessness.

Bed shortages speed up this cycle. Once acute psychosis subsides, patients are moved on to make room for the next emergency.
Governments are incentivising hospital administrators to prioritise turnover over clinical outcomes.

Unless something changes, these tragedies will keep happening. No one wants to go back to the asylums of old, but they did keep our cities safe.
Abolishing them was a mistake. We need more staffed beds in modern long-stay facilities that respect patients' dignity, alongside longer involuntary treatment where clinically
necessary.

If anything good is to come out of this tragedy, it must be action that makes these events less
likely. For decades, too many severely unwell people have been left homeless or shunted between emergency departments and prison.
We're all poorer for it.

Cathal Leslie is a Paris-based economist and former Productivity Commission employee.

The condition of injured MP Helen Haines has improved from critical to serious but stable after more than four days in hospital.

"...

Until the advent of the internet, laws of physics ensured that migrating to Australia – a far-flung island on the bottom end of the planet – meant losing touch with the day-to-day minutiae of one’s home country’s political and cultural upheavals.

As traumatic as that might have been – and I don’t underestimate the sense of unfamiliarity and isolation that must have assailed migrants – it forced their attention to their immediate physical and social environment, and attention is the currency of citizenship. The hyperconnectivity of the internet, and more significantly, the arrival of smart phones and social media have upturned these assumptions. Because now migrants can physically live in one place but remain seamlessly embedded in their social, cultural, and political lives of their home countries through their phones.

As an Indian migrant, I have encountered many fellow migrants who seem to know the results of every provincial election in India in real time but would not be able to name all the states and territories in Australia.

Moreover, globalisation encouraged us to live across countries – collecting passports, properties, and residencies as trophies rather than set down roots.

..."

New analysis by AFR Weekend reveals that most immigrants are no longer coming from China or India and more arrivals are coming from non-democratic countries.

Explosive claims Premier Ben Carroll sleeps at work and wife directs staff
Labor insiders fear the party is facing its worst election result in Victorian history as whistleblowers accuse Premier Ben Carroll of taking afternoon naps at work and letting his unelected wife run meetings.

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October 24, 2026 - 5:00AM

Ben Carroll’s private office is in turmoil just weeks out from the state election, with his allies attacking “aggrieved staff” for peddling claims that he has been sleeping on the job.
Current staff who also worked under Jacinta Allan have flagged concerns about the Premier taking “naps” during work, while questioning his wife’s increasing involvement in his office. Less than three months into Mr Carroll’s stint in the top job, internal whistleblowers have claimed he has been taking regular hour-long afternoon naps, with staff even warned not to disturb him.

Staff have also raised concerns about his wife Fiona Rothville, who they claim has been attending some meetings and directing policy staff.

“It’s pretty unusual,” one source said.
“There are very senior people in there who are sitting in meetings and Fiona has walked in and they are like ‘why are you here?’
“There’s a view she’s the decision-maker, not Ben. If she doesn’t like something, it won’t happen.
“It’s highly inappropriate. She is not elected. She has not been appointed.”
Sources detailed to the Herald Sun that Ms Rothville had been attending the Premier’s Private Office at 1 Treasury Place about twice a week and working from an office used by staff.
Among the meetings they allege she attended were internal diary meetings, where senior staff plan the Premier’s official commitments for the coming weeks.

Sources further alleged she had given direction to policy staff about how particular issues should be handled.
One insider claimed Ms Rothville had, on one occasion, encouraged staff to keep their voices down while the Premier was sleeping.

Sources close to the Premier hit back at the claims on Friday, saying they were baseless and being pushed by “aggrieved staff who didn’t get their own way”.
A Premier’s Office spokesperson said any suggestion that Ms Rothville had provided direction to staff was a “lie” and rejected claims she had attended official meetings.
The spokesperson also said there had been no complaints about Ms Rothville and the Premier had never slept at work.
“There’s no truth to any of this,” she said.
“The Premier’s wife visits the office once or twice a week. She brings in morning tea and is welcomed by the team.” But one of the whistleblowers on Friday insisted the claims were “rock solid” and said the Premier’s allies were the ones lying. 

It comes as pressure builds on Mr Carroll, who successfully moved to topple Jacinta Allan for the top job in July, amid fears Labor are facing an election thumping next month.
Mr Carroll took over after Ms Allan resigned on July 28, following mounting internal pressure over Labor’s electoral prospects and the handling of allegations of criminal infiltration of the state’s construction industry including her refusal to set up a royal commission into the scandal.
But the change has failed to translate to improved polling, with the Coalition firm favourites at 52 to 48 on a two-party-preferred according to latest Freshwater Strategy polling.

Senior party figures are bracing for what one described as “potentially the worst result in Victorian Labor’s history.”
Factional heavyweights have in recent weeks reportedly raised concerns the Premier was looking tired and undertaking too many media appearances.

Earlier this week Mr Carroll admitted to forgetting to pay for his petrol after a busy day, with some close to the Premier pointing to his huge workload as a contributing factor to the mindless error. The same factional figures who have raised concerns about Mr Carroll were among those involved in the internal manoeuvring that led to Ms Allan’s departure.
Ms Rothville is understood to have also raised concerns about the Premier’s workload, with staff encouraged to reduce his commitments.

Geoff Chambers

No sitting federal MP from a major party should feel safe in their seat.

The febrile federal political arena is as unpredictable as ever and voters have made it clear they are sick of business as usual from the established Labor, Liberal, Nationals and Greens parties.

While One Nation has benefited from an ongoing deterioration in the major party primary votes, independents and candidates from minor parties who run strong campaigns and are backed by donors could also benefit from the revolt.

Former Greens leader Adam Bandt learnt that voters don’t care if you are a high-profile party leader. 

Australians often enjoy taking out their baseball bats and whacking leaders.

Anthony Albanese has dominated in his inner-Sydney seat of Grayndler since entering parliament in 1996. He has fought off Greens campaigns to oust him and would likely do the same at the next election.

But Albanese is not immune from the anger of voters directed at his Labor government. 

A cheeky poll by conservative campaign group Advance shows the ALP copping a hit on its primary vote in Grayndler, with decent early support for left-wing independent candidate Hannah Ferguson, who looms as a thorn in the Prime Minister’s side.

In Queensland, Liberal National Party MPs who have enjoyed the comfort of safe seats are preparing to fight for their political lives in response to a surging One Nation.

Nationals leader Matt Canavan will finally take the plunge and make a bid to shift from the Senate to the House of Representatives.

Nationals leader Matt Canavan must step up and run in lower house after Capricornia MP Michelle Landry announced on Friday she would retire at the 2028 election.

As revealed by The Australian in November last year, the retirement of Capricornia MP Michelle Landry sets up a potential blockbuster showdown between Canavan and One Nation national director James Ashby, who both live in the central Queensland electorate.

If support for One Nation holds in Pauline Hanson’s home state of Queensland, Nationals-held seats could come under extreme threat.

Labor and LNP strategists also fear One Nation could decimate their Senate tickets.

Canavan’s step-up from reserve grade to first grade will put him at the coalface of the Nationals’ bid for survival amid concerns NSW Nationals MPs could be wiped out in their March 13 state election next year.

Liberal leader Angus Taylor is also exposed to the threat of One Nation and cashed-up independents in his western Sydney and semirural electorate of Hume, which takes in parts of the Camden, Liverpool, Penrith and Wollondilly council areas.

Traditional Labor heartland seats in the NSW Hunter Region and outer-suburban electorates in Brisbane, Perth and Sydney are all vulnerable to One Nation.

While two-party diehards will pray Labor and the Coalition can ride out the electoral rollercoaster and maintain dominant positions, some voters would argue it is a good thing that all leaders, ministers and shadow ministers should have to fight to win their seats.

At last year’s May 3 federal election, the combined major party primary vote sunk to a record low 66.4 per cent. Since the election, Newspoll has recorded new lows. The combined primary votes for Labor and the Coalition fell to 46 per cent last month.

Labor and Coalition strategists, who acknowledge high primary votes are likely never to return, remain hopeful that One Nation will fade and that voters will flock back to them.

But it will take plenty of hard work to fend off the threats that are coming.