Melbourne: A man was charged on Thursday with threatening an Australian lawmaker’s staff with nunchucks days after another legislator was critically injured when a man repeatedly hit her with a car.
Nunchucks are a controlled weapon used in martial arts consisting of two or more batons joined by a cord, rope or chain, according to Western Australia state law. Nunchucks can only be carried in public in the state for use in legitimate sports, training or martial arts instruction.
The incidents are heightening concerns about female politicians’ safety and security in a country where lawmakers are highly accessible to the public.
Man charged with entering lawmaker’s office with nunchucks
Prosecutors said in a Perth court on Thursday that John Lawrence Smart, 56, was screaming when he entered Western Australian state government minister Hannah Beazley’s electorate office in suburban Perth on Wednesday, demanding to see her while holding above his head two pieces of wood tied together.
Beazley wasn’t in the office at the time. Two staff members remained safe behind a security barrier in the office and no one was hurt.
“It was confronting,” Beazley posted on social media.
Smart said from the prisoner’s dock that he had been holding claves, not nunchucks. Claves are typically wooden sticks used as a percussion instrument.
Magistrate Heidi Watson refused to release Smart on bail, saying he posed a potential risk to himself and the public. She ordered Smart to be medically assessed while in custody. He had previously been involuntarily admitted to hospital with schizophrenia.
Smart did not enter pleas to charges of being armed, or pretending to be armed, in a way that may cause fear and with making an unlawful threat.
There was no allegation that Smart’s alleged behaviour was connected to the driver who hit federal lawmaker Helen Haines with his car in the east coast state of Victoria on Monday.
Haines’ alleged attacker, Brendan Nugent, appeared in a court on Wednesday on charges including intentionally causing serious injury. He did not enter pleas and remains in custody.
Police are still searching for a motive.
Haines, a 65-year-old independent lawmaker, remained in critical condition on Thursday in a Melbourne hospital where surgeons have amputated both her legs, a health department statement said.
Australians worry attacks threaten tradition of accessible politicians
Both the Haines and Beazley incidents have raised concerns about the safety of female politicians, who account for a growing proportion of lawmakers in Australian parliaments. Just under 50% of federal lawmakers and a majority of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Cabinet are women.
Australian lawmakers are some of the most accessible in the world and political violence has traditionally been rare. But there are fears that increasingly toxic public debate driven by social media creates additional risks for elected women.
Albanese said the fact that the threat to Beazley came so soon after the alleged attack on Haines was “just heartbreaking.” Beazley is the daughter of Albanese’s former federal colleague, Kim Beazley.
“We can have debate and disagreement, but do it in a way without descending into the sort of violence that we have seen in too many parts of the world,” Albanese told Australian Broadcasting Corp. “It’s certainly not who we are as Australians.”
Albanese attended an online security briefing this week for women lawmakers in his centre-left Labor Party. Security agencies addressed misogynistic threats directed at them.
Male and female federal lawmakers agree that women are facing the worst of the online abuse.
“Of course people are concerned. They’re anxious,” Albanese said. “There has been a normalization of behavior that can be very aggressive in a way that wasn’t happening a couple of decades ago.”
Governor-General abused on social media
Governor-General Sam Mostyn, who is only the second woman to ever serve as the British monarch’s representative in Australia, said that she was abused on social media for speaking at a press conference on Wednesday alongside Haines’ husband Phil Haines.
“Like any woman who has stepped up into any position across any part of our society, there is a unique and pernicious form of attack that comes our way,” Mostyn told ABC.
“Women across the country know that there are certain things that are reserved for women in that attack that go to our gender and they are often vicious and just despicable,” she added.