Updated ,first published
Federal MPs will be urged to sign a civility pledge that MP Helen Haines alone had backed before she was attacked, though One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has hit out at critics who say her party’s cartoons are contributing to the febrile environment.
The case for a calmer debate was given weight on Sunday when Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett drew a direct link between inflamed rhetoric and the rise in violent threats.
“It does have a direct correlation to what we see in terms of threats and abuse, and sometimes it’s very immediate,” Barrett said on ABC’s Insiders on Sunday morning, echoing ASIO’s repeated warnings.
Asked about a One Nation cartoon that depicts former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews being run over by a car driven by children’s program character Bluey, and suggesting the same fate for Anthony Albanese, Barrett said: “We do see examples where there are particular announcements or things like you’ve just described, [where] there is a reaction.”
“My hope is that this really causes people to pause and have a think about what’s happening in this country. And if this is not the incident [that causes change], then what is?”
Hanson rejected the criticism of major parties on Sunday, defending the cartoons despite apologising last week for an episode that had made fun of senator Jacqui Lambie’s health.
“The Please Explain cartoons have nothing to do with the tragic attack on Helen Haines. They will not be going anywhere,” Hanson said. “Liberal and Labor politicians want our cartoons censored because they don’t like the scrutiny.
“When violence touches politicians, the response is immediate: more security, more protection and demands for action. Where is that same urgency when ordinary Australians are attacked?”
Coalition foreign affairs spokesman Ted O’Brien said Hanson’s satirical cartoons showing figures including Andrews and senator Lidia Thorpe being run over were “not timely”. The cartoons were published years ago, in some cases.
“I think it is a time for all of us to be pausing to look at how we operate,” O’Brien said on News24.
‘These days, of course, you can sit behind a keyboard and you can bash out a threat or abuse very, very quickly.’
Krissy Barrett, AFP Commissioner
A day after Haines’ condition improved from critical to serious but stable, Barrett said police were being inundated with serious threats to parliamentarians that led to one person a week being charged. She announced that authorities are probing the mental health and political views of the alleged attacker.
Politicians return to Canberra on Monday, when most of the day will be spent on tributes for the widely respected MP. Labor is also planning to fast-track a set of security upgrades from an ongoing review into the safety of politicians, as reported last week, which is expected to be spoken about at a Monday morning cabinet meeting.
Speaker of the House Milton Dick will invite MPs to speak about Haines’ incident on Monday. Parliamentarians are still weighing up the best way to capture the moment. Independent MPs who are close to Haines want colleagues to sign up to the “civility pledge” inspired by a similar push by the family of British MP Jo Cox, who was murdered in 2016. Haines was the first MP to have signed up, before her attack. Dick may reference the themes of the pledge but he is expected to leave it up to different MPs to honour Haines how they see fit, and the independents are not proposing to be prescriptive or rigid about the need to sign on.
“In my political life, I pledge to act with honesty, respect and compassion,” the pledge says.
Security will be bolstered around parliament this week.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers told this masthead: “We can’t pretend that the sort of violence we see around the world associated with politics can’t replicate itself here. In the same week that we saw riots on the streets of Paris, we saw this unspeakable act of political violence in the main drag at Wangaratta.”
Barrett said part of her job when she began working at the AFP was to sift through handwritten threats to elected officials. Now, she said, her day often started with reading a pages-long report on threats to MPs.
“These days, of course, you can sit behind a keyboard and you can bash out a threat or abuse very, very quickly,” she said. “It’s roughly 50/50 in terms of the gender of federal parliamentarians. There is no doubt that the nature of the threats and the abuse that is targeted at female parliamentarians is … sexual violence threats.
“We are not here to police free speech. We are not here to intervene in political discourse.”
Barrett said the investigation into 43-year-old Brendan Nugent was focused partly on widespread reports of mental ill health as well as the “causes or issues that he has aligned himself with”.
Nugent has a history of posting online about logging and environmentalism, and more recently he became fixated on the war in Gaza, indicating he sits on the political left. Authorities are also looking into the relationship between Nugent and his father and his stepmother, who are friends with Haines.
The federal police chief also raised the alarm on Australia’s relatively high volume of drug consumption, telling users: “You are fuelling not just an organised crime environment, but it’s a national security threat.
“We need to be having a conversation about this as a country,” she said. “We are seizing more drugs throughout the Pacific than we have ever seized by far. We know that we’re still paying really high prices for drugs in this country.”
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