Opinion
You’ve heard many tributes to Helen Haines. You’re about to hear many more. Don’t be fooled. Australia is on the brink of missing the moment. If so, nothing significant will change. We’d not be returning to business as usual. We’d be descending into violence as foretold.
Some of the specifics of the attack on her may allow an easy excuse for inaction. The alleged assailant apparently had a history of mental illness. You can already hear the argument for a fatalistic complacency: “Ah, so he’s some random madman, it’s not politically motivated after all.“
Even if that turns out to be the case, it misses the point entirely. Several points.
The first is that, if mental illness is a factor, that’s a part of Australia’s problem, not an excuse for ignoring it.
Second. The overarching reality is that our society has descended into a new era of disrespect, distress and danger. Authority figures, including members of parliament, are not the only targets. But they’re the biggest. They’re increasingly at risk.
Even if this dreadful mangling of the blameless Helen Haines hadn’t happened, widen this week’s news aperture a bit. Two days after the attack on Haines, an angry man walked screaming into the electoral office in Perth of Hannah Beazley, a minister in the West Australian government and daughter of Kim Beazley. Police allege that the man was armed with two sets of improvised nunchucks and threatened staff. In court, the accused said he was carrying drumsticks, not nunchucks. He had a history of mental illness.
On the same day, a man laughing maniacally walked into the electoral office in Brisbane of the federal Minister for Communications, Anika Wells. He pointed a toy gun at the receptionist’s head. Draw your own conclusions about his mental wellness.
There are about 20 cases before the courts of people accused of threatening the life of the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, as my colleague Paul Sakkal disclosed this week.
One after another this week, MPs told reporters that they’d been hit with dozens, even hundreds of threats against their lives, their families’ lives and their staffs. Women MPs routinely are threatened with rape. Independent senator Fatima Payman said she’d referred more than 100 threats to police, with seven of the cases now before the courts.
Barnaby Joyce said a man drove his car at him and only stopped when Federal Police officers obstructed the would-be assailant.
The number of violent threats against MPs and high office holders reported to police rose from 555 four years ago to 1067 last year, according to Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett. In other words, if Helen Haines had not been attacked and maimed horribly, it’s only a matter of time before others are. ASIO and the federal police have been warning of exactly that for many months now.
Are politicians the only targets of abuse, threats and violence? Of course not. Coles and Woolies workers are abused, airline staff are abused. Ambulance paramedics are abused. Teachers are abused. A few years ago, you didn’t see signs at a service counter asking you to “please show respect”. Now they’re common. At the doctor’s office, at the airport, at the dry cleaner’s.
Just about anyone and everyone is a target now. This is about much more than violence against political figures. The political class might be the canaries; we all live in the same coalmine.
“Elevated levels of grievance, intolerance and polarisation continue to create a permissive environment of violence,” the ASIO chief, Mike Burgess, said after the attack on Haines. “The temperature and trajectory of the security environment are concerning.” Note, in particular, the word “trajectory”.
So it’d be the height of foolishness to minimise the Helen Haines attack. She’s a dedicated and caring servant of the people, as everyone who knows her has attested. She lost her legs to this wanton violence. The least we can do is to not lose focus on the problems that led to it.
What to do? Every one of us can and should act. We share the pleasures and the pains of the same country. We can all contribute to improving it in this dire moment.
Pauline Hanson managed to show some responsibility this week. The One Nation leader apologised for the puerile cartoon video that mocked Jacqui Lambie’s vaginal prolapse. She had the video taken down. It might be coincidental that she did so after the assault on Haines. But if Hanson, arch provocateur and Trump acolyte, can accept responsibility, show some respect and mend her ways, everyone can.
Well, almost everyone. “That was great, man. Wow. Man, I loved that,” Donald Trump gushed this week when one of his supporters punched a heckler at a Trump rally. We won’t get any help from him.
We have to look to ourselves to help ourselves. The action agenda starts at the top. With the prime minister, the Opposition Leader Angus Taylor, the state premiers.
It’s blindingly obvious that “social” media has opened a vector of hate and incitement into our society, indeed, every society. It’s sufficiently obvious that the federal assistant Treasury minister, Andrew Leigh, last week wrote a speech titled The Anger Machine. His speech took on special resonance when he delivered it this week.
If you doubt the connection between “social” media and violence, Leigh’s speech is persuasive. Among a raft of evidence, he says: “A study in Germany found that anti-refugee sentiment on Facebook predicted attacks on refugees. In weeks when Facebook Germany experienced major server outages, hate crimes fell.“
Commissioner Krissy Barrett this week said that the federal police “have been increasingly concerned about the number of individuals being warned and being charged about their behaviour – particularly their online threats and abuse”.
And, again, it’s much broader than MPs and leaders alone. Another senior federal police official testified this week that Australia was facing a “tsunami” of youth crime enabled by “social” media and now being turbocharged by AI.
Acting deputy commissioner Sandra Booth told a parliamentary inquiry that they’d found a 13-year-old boy allegedly with violent extremist material. He was being groomed to commit a school shooting.
The need to civilise this deeply uncivilised industry is a matter of self-protection for the whole of society. It’s Australia’s good fortune that the federal government has a proposed law before the parliament right now. The Digital Duty of Care bill would force the big “social” media corporations and AI businesses to accept responsibility for what’s published on their sites on pain of fines of up to $109 million.
It’s Australia’s poor fortune that the Coalition has not only taken objection to parts of the bill, but refused to negotiate over it. So it’s at an impasse.
The action agenda now? First, Albanese should pick up the phone and invite Angus Taylor to discuss the problem of the Hate Machine and find some common ground. The attack on Helen Haines surely has brought urgency and potency to the task.
Second, Taylor has a responsibility to agree to meet Albanese, to discuss, and to find constructive solutions that both parties can accept. If he doesn’t, Albanese will end up negotiating with the Greens to get his bill through the Senate. The Coalition will have zero input in that case. So get on with it in the national interest.
Along the way, both men should instruct their staffs to stop the practice of drawing up “dirt sheets” on opponents. It’s an ancient practice and they’ve all done it. Albanese’s office this week was accused of handing out such a sheet on Helen Haines months ago. Anyone who’s spent more than a minute in politics or political journalism knows that this document wasn’t a real dirt sheet. It was way too genteel. But it was an attempt to raise questions about Haines’ motives in asking for big infrastructure projects in her electorate. So it was not a customary dirt sheet, but it was unattractive. And unfair. Enough.
Next is the problem of mental illness. Patrick McGorry this week took to the airwaves to point out that probably tens of thousands of mentally ill Australians are unable to get access to care. McGorry, professor of youth mental health at Melbourne University, described how the standalone mental hospitals were closed down by state governments 30 years ago and never properly replaced.
The result is that “people with severe mental illnesses remain banished to the margins of society, consigned to languish in their bedrooms, or suffer on the streets or in jail,” as he wrote in The Age two months ago.
The states are responsible for mental health care. The third item on the action agenda is for the premiers. Every one of them has a responsibility to create a functional mental health care system. They’ll try to hide and wait this out. But it’s only going to get worse. Which premier will show leadership?
Then there’s the rest of us. Andrew Leigh has some suggestions: “Friendship may well be the most underrated health intervention around. A review of 148 studies found that stronger social relationships were associated with 50 per cent higher odds of survival over the study periods.
“A friend’s foolish opinion sits alongside everything else we know about them. A stranger’s foolish post can become all we know. Protecting friendships gives us practice in seeing a whole person, and in remaining connected through disagreement.
“Switching off our devices can help us reconnect with one another. Go out to dinner with a friend, and agree that the first person to touch their phone pays the bill. Start a book club where the reading is optional but the conversation is compulsory. Invite friends over for a potluck dinner, with everyone bringing a dish and a stranger. Organise a summer get-together on your street.“
If we only end up giving MPs a bit more protection, only one thing will change. The cost will go up. They will remain vulnerable to violence. The causes must be treated, not just the symptoms.
A bigger action agenda will be required over time. But we cannot miss this moment. If we don’t take these actions for Helen, we should at least take some of them for ourselves.
Peter Hartcher is political editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
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Peter Hartcher is political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.From our partners
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