Floral tributes outside the office of Australian MP Helen Haines, who was critically wounded in an alleged attack outside her electoral office in Wangaratta on 21 October. Photograph: Martin Keep/AFP/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Floral tributes outside the office of Australian MP Helen Haines, who was critically wounded in an alleged attack outside her electoral office in Wangaratta on 21 October. Photograph: Martin Keep/AFP/Getty Images Opinion Helen Haines The tragic events of the past week have shown Australians who we are – and it’s a long way from our image of ourselves Julianne Schultz How can we attempt to understand the climate in which the hideous alleged attack on Helen Haines occurred?
Immediately after news of the alleged attack on Helen Haines was revealed, the prime minister and others were quick to say , this is not who we Australians are, this is not the way we behave .
The data from the Australian federal police, Asio and the experience of individual MPs suggested this may in fact be what a disappointingly significant number of us have become over the past decade.
Nonetheless it was a comforting and reassuring message, reinforced by the outpouring of goodwill and best wishes for the critically injured MP.
Read more But these words had hardly entered the public domain before the backlash began online. The same thing should happen to more women; the perpetrator was a political activist, and on and on, filling the comments space in platform after platform.
Other female MPs, their faces stretched tight with grief and streaked with tears, told of the threats they had received, of letters pushed under their doors, of angry people, usually men, arriving in their offices to shout abuse and make threats, to watching over their shoulder as they walked back to their car park or office at night – and of course the endless stream of online invective with expletives, caps and exclamation marks.
Even the governor general, Sam Mostyn, only the second woman to hold that office, commented after receiving abusive comments following her call for kindness and respect. “Women across the country know that there are certain things that are reserved for women … that go to our gender and they are often vicious and just despicable.”
At this point one can’t presume to guess details of what may have been in the mind of the man who has been charged with the alleged attack that led to Haines’ grievous injuries. That will be for the court to determine.
Over time the virus has mutated, increased its lethality and infected many But we can attempt to understand the climate in which this hideous attack occurred. It is a human and interpersonal climate that has been heating for years – and just like the real heating climate, not one with easy, cost-free ways of cooling.
This climate won’t be on trial, but it forms a backdrop that touches us all and needs to be addressed head-on.
In this broader context it is demonstrable that angry, unstable men particularly hate capable, intelligent and gracious women.
Personally, I hold the “leader of the free world” to account for fostering and enabling an environment in which the once unthinkable has almost become the new normal.
Once it wouldn’t have mattered all that much if the leader of a country in another hemisphere lacked character and said outrageous things. But in the global village it matters a great deal.
Positive, personal relations between people have been undermined with vicious word…