The country town of Wangaratta is the last place anyone would have imagined a brutal attack on a parliamentarian that has left her with horrendous injuries and the loss of her legs. And Helen Haines, in a sense, is the last parliamentarian you would have imagined being attacked in this way. I want to acknowledge Helen's husband, Phil, her children, Will, Nick and Georgia, her family, her staff, her friends and supporters, the toll that the attack is taking on them and the worry about the future of someone who, long before they were a member of parliament, was a wife, a mother and a friend.

Like so many of us, Helen was active in her community before she became an MP. I first met Helen through Cathy McGowan, when Helen came to the hearings of the Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition Relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples back in 2018. I remember chatting with Helen over the break in proceedings. As an MP, I've admired the way that Helen's gone about making the case for better telco in her electorate. It's something I've tried to do as well. When Peter Dutton appointed me shadow Attorney-General in 2022, he asked me to spend some time with Helen to look at the work she'd done on a federal anticorruption commission. She gave me a good briefing and listened to my concerns about civil liberties. She was a picture of courtesy. Indeed, as all colleagues know, Helen is always courteous. It's not surprising that she's very well liked and respected across the parliament. All of us here and all of us in my electorate wish Helen a speedy recovery. We want to see her restored to serving her community as their representative in this House in the 48th Parliament, so today we stand in solidarity with Helen Haines.

But we also need to talk about political violence in this country, about extremism and about the tipping point—the moment where, because of grievance, ideology or other reasons, people feel justified in rejecting the normal bounds of politics and straying into physical force. The attacker in this case had some pretty extreme beliefs, but it actually doesn't matter what his beliefs were. Helen wasn't targeted because of her beliefs. Helen Haines was targeted because she was a politician, because she is a member of this parliament and because she is a representative of the people. Although the attack happened to Helen Haines, it could have happened to any other member of this place. The attack on Helen Haines is an attack on the institution of our democracy and on the institution of this parliament. The attack on Helen Haines is an act of political violence. The attack on Helen Haines is an attack on the people of Australia and, more specifically, on the people of Indi. It affects those people's right and the right of Australians to access their representatives. For the people of Indi, this attack denies them their right, for weeks at least, to have a representative that speaks for them in this place and votes on laws in their name.

Let's call out the central issue here—the extremist political ideologies that accept or indulge in violence, philosophies that either explicitly or implicitly say it's okay to use violence and force to achieve political ends. We know who they are: the Neo-Nazis of the extreme right, the ideologues on the hard and green left enabled by their softer friends and fellow travellers in the cultural and academic institutions, and the hate preachers of radical Islam. They are all extremist movements that give a nod and a wink to violence, that celebrate resistance and protest and give tacit approval to take things a little bit further, and that normalise the use of force so that, in the moment or by design, it's seen as an option that's on the table. They don't care who the targets are, but Australians are sick of it. It's our democracy that suffers.

Sadly, as last year's McKinnon Institute poll reveals, there's a growing number of Australians who believe that political violence is acceptable. I suspect there are very few members of parliament who are spared. What happened to Helen Haines is the most egregious case, but we've seen other examples of politically motivated violence in the firebombing of MPs' offices by radical pro-Palestine activists. We've seen it in attacks in person or online against female colleagues, gay colleagues, Muslim colleagues and Jewish colleagues. It doesn't matter where you are on the political spectrum; everyone from Senator Payman to Senator Hanson is in the frame.

So what should our response be? Our job is not to shut down robust debate; our role is to challenge the extremist ideologies that normalise the use of force in the first place. In a robust democracy, there's nothing wrong with people passionately expressing their views—far from it; it's the lifeblood of our parliament and our democratic process. It's why parliament exists; it mediates conflict, it provides a civilised way of resolving disputes—votes, not violence—and it allows government to self-correct when it gets things wrong. Our challenge is to make democracy and parliament work in the 21st century, and that starts with calling out in advance extremist ideologies and philosophies that don't care about the tipping point, to preserve civil disagreement or, better still, disagreement with civility for all Australians. I'll never give up on civility in politics, and, I suspect, neither will Helen Haines.