Editorial
Before politics, Helen Haines spent decades working around hospitals in her federal seat of Indi and captured the local mental health crisis with her trademark gentle decency that a few years later echoes with bittersweet poignancy.
“Everywhere I travel in Indi, people talk to me about mental health. About the challenges they face in getting help for themselves or their loved ones when facing mental ill-health, and about the impact it has on them and their communities,” she said. “I’ve spent 35 years working in the hospitals of North East Victoria. I know what it looks like when we fail to properly fund our mental health services.”
On Monday, Haines was allegedly attacked by a man driving a Toyota Landcruiser while unpacking her car outside her Wangaratta electorate office. She lost both legs and remains in a Melbourne hospital.
No clear motive for the attack has emerged. Brendan Nugent is before the courts.
In the hours afterwards, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke announced a multi-agency response – involving Victoria Police, the AFP, ASIO and the Joint Counter-Terrorism Team – prompting a Petri dish of paranoia in the media that conflated terrorism, antisemitism and left-wing and right-wing musings and rants.
Then, in the days that followed, many MPs revealed the fetid standard of political debate in Australia was behind an increasingly hostile political discourse and surging threats against elected leaders. Senior government and opposition figures moved to reassure anxious colleagues. Security arrangements were reconsidered.
Meanwhile, Nugent, the man charged with attacking Haines, reportedly received treatment at psychiatric facilities, including a 20-bed acute adult mental health in-patient facility in Wangaratta, and had lived alone outside town for some 10 years.
We don’t know the details of Nugent’s health history. But Wangaratta has echoes of the Bondi Junction tragedy when a homeless Queenslander with a history of mental illness, Joel Cauchi, 40, was shot dead by NSW Police after he rampaged through Westfield shopping centre and stabbed 16 people in April 2024. Six died. A coronial inquest determined that Cauchi, who suffered schizophrenia, was psychotic that day. The thrust of the coroner’s recommendations urged government to do better in housing and caring for the mentally unwell.
The Minns government accepted most of the coroner’s recommendations and announced a new health-led response model for mental health emergencies but, admitting its reforms were not enough, baulked on providing short- and long-term accommodation services.
Last week, the Herald reported on a confidential ministerial briefing note that warned $600 million a year would be needed to fix the state’s shortfall of frontline public mental health staff. Police are also concerned that mental illness is increasing within the community, and they are relied upon as primary responders to emotional distress and mental health crises.
No one wants to stigmatise those living with mental health problems. But across Australia, there is no escaping the higher risk that comes with a parlous state of our mental health services, lack of support and misplaced priorities. The links between homelessness, isolation and mental health have been an ongoing and worsening issue, yet a crisis seems to be the only time this is openly discussed.
The attack on Haines is another reminder that Australia must get serious about mental health. It must be tackled as a matter of urgency – to look after sufferers, and to protect the rest of the community.
Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter.
