Haines Horror Demands Facts, Not Scapegoats

Helen Haines deserves our prayers and every chance of recovery. The news that the 65-year-old federal politician suffered critical injuries after being struck by a vehicle outside her Wangaratta electorate office is horrifying.

Witnesses reportedly described the driver making a U-turn before striking Haines near her car. Police arrested a 43-year-old man.

Anthony Albanese said this was no accident, while acknowledging that investigators had not established a motive. Yet the discussion immediately moved to political temperatures and social media. Before anyone assigns political blame, Australians deserve to know what actually happened and why.

Political violence must be condemned. It must also be understood. Asking why people threaten politicians does not excuse the threats, any more than investigating the causes of crime excuses criminals.

The latest reported total number of threats against public office holders rose from 951 to 1,067, an increase of 116, or 12.2 per cent. These figures encompass reports of harassment, nuisance, offensive behaviour and threats. They are not just a tally of physical attacks. Nonetheless, the longer-term increase is substantial: the AFP reported 555 incidents in 2021–22, compared with 1,067 in 2025–26. That is an increase of 512, a near doubling, in just four years.

That demands a serious explanation. What has happened to the relationship between Australians and their political representatives and government officials?

The AFP’s own threat assessment identifies economic pressures, including inflation, interest rates and living costs, among factors capable of driving threatening behaviour. Are Australians becoming increasingly hostile because they believe politicians ignore their problems? Has trust deteriorated because people feel that decisions affecting their homes, livelihoods and communities are imposed without meaningful consent?

One X commentator identifying as an Indi local described the alleged attack on Haines as horrifying, but outlined how local farmers confronting solar, wind, battery and transmission developments felt abandoned by their representative. That comment doesn’t establish the driver’s motive, but it does raise a legitimate question: do affected Australians believe their representatives are listening and delivering results?

People can condemn violence while demanding answers about land, livelihoods and government decisions. Peaceful grievances do not become illegitimate because somebody commits a dreadful act.

Nor should conservatives accept collective blame for the alleged Haines attack, as left-wing agitators online and commentators in the mainstream media have already begun to ascribe. Even Albanese and other politicians are dog-whistling this line when they talk about lowering the temperature of political debate and the like.

Anyone proposing to blame One Nation or ardent conservatives in general for this incident is engaging in dangerous rhetoric themselves: they are trying to criminalise an entire political movement. The voting patterns and concerns of the alleged attacker do not make any political party or movement guilty of any offence, otherwise, by the same standards, all Muslims would stand condemned by the actions of one Islamist terrorist.

What of heated political rhetoric, though?

Well, at Queensland Labor’s conference on 30 August, Albanese described hard-right populists as peddling politics that was “dangerous, divisive, and downright dishonest”, before discussing One Nation. The following day, Attorney-General Michelle Rowland associated elements of One Nation with extremist and neo-Nazi views. As a proponent of free speech, I have no qualms with politicians using tough language to criticise their opponents, but their own language must also be examined when they demand that everyone else lower the temperature.

And the insinuation that right-wingers are the sole purveyors of violence in Australia is demonstrably false. I have personal experience of political intimidation from the Left.

On the Sunday after the 2022 federal election, I went to Brisbane’s Breakfast Creek Hotel with then One Nation state MP Stephen Andrew. A horde of unionists were there celebrating Albanese’s victory. While we were peacefully enjoying XXXX Bitter off the wood keg in the front bar, an angry unionist confronted me and wanted a fight. The harassment became serious enough that security had to be called.

Stephen and I moved to the restaurant area at the back. Several more angry unionists confronted us there, also wanting a fight. And why? Because of our conservative politics. Eventually, I left the pub earlier than I had planned in order to avoid an altercation.

Years earlier, at a town hall meeting in Bowen, I recall a Greens supporter laying hands on my wife and telling her our children would suffer because of me. My office also received a steady stream of threats of violence, including death threats, pretty much entirely from people outside my electorate.

Those experiences are why I reject any suggestion that intimidation belongs exclusively to one political camp. No politician’s wife deserves to be harassed. A One Nation representative deserves to enjoy dinner without being threatened. Helen Haines deserves to go about her work in safety.

Political leaders must condemn violence consistently, police must establish the facts of the alleged Haines attack, and elected representatives must take peaceful grievances seriously. Australians should never have to choose between their safety and their right to participate in politics.

“Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.