AUSTRALIAN lawmakers and enforcers have to sought to lower the temperature of political debate and warned about growing threats to public figures since 2021, when anti-lockdown protesters put an effigy of a state leader on a makeshift gallows in Melbourne.
Those fears came to a head on Monday when a man rammed a car into Helen Haines, an independent member of the lower-house, inflicting major injuries including the loss of a leg, media and officials said, while doctors work to save the other.
Police have yet to state a motive for the attack outside Haines' regional electorate office in Wangaratta, some 240 km (150 miles) away from Melbourne.
"We've all seen a level of ... hate and disrespect and intolerance in our political debate that we never really used to see," Health Minister Mark Butler told Channel Nine's Today Show.
