The member for Indi, Dr Helen Haines, is the kind of person to whom our parliament and our democratic culture aspire, not because of her particular views or political philosophy but because of the approach she's taken to the work of a representative. That's not to put Helen on a pedestal in the aftermath of the terrible attack that occurred a week ago. I'm sure that's not what she would want, and, indeed, Helen would be the first to acknowledge those qualities in many others across the parliament. But, as so many of the contributions today have rightly noted, the member for Indi does exemplify those qualities to an extraordinary degree. She made her commitment to those qualities plain in her first speech. She said:

… life is short, family is everything and there is honour in the service of others.

She described herself as a regional Australian and a defiant optimist. She said she came to this place 'to talk positively about what we hope to start in regional Australia and not simply what we want to stop'. And she quoted a fellow nurse in Florence Nightingale, who said, 'How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.'

The member for Indi has been utterly consistent as a representative who emphasises public service, who leans into optimism and positivity, who believes in practical and constructive solutions and who knows that the politics of fear is a kind of democratic poison. The attack on the member for Indi calls on all of us to reflect on what can be done, personally and collectively, to reject a cultural swerve towards polarisation, extremity and hatefulness through the politics of distortion and outrage. It calls on us to acknowledge the miasma of online tech platform communication that has seeped in and settled over society, with its absence of personal or systemic responsibility, its absence of natural or regulated civic decency and its driving AClockwork Orange logic of anger and hostility and provocation. I'm grateful to have heard from people in my community that recognise the need to turn the volume down, take the caps lock off and give the shouted accusations a rest.

There's no arguing against the fact that we face grave and difficult challenges that are real and that must be addressed. Of course, in the face of those challenges, our politics needs to be committed and rigorous, and it can't be expected to always be neat or quiet or unprovocative. But our politics does not need to be wilfully extreme and personally judgemental and threatening. There's no justification or excuse for that, whether it's conduct or speech, whether it's from representatives or commentators or citizens. And our politics shouldn't veer all the time towards accusations of complicity in the apocalypse, with a vocabulary that instantly and lazily descends to words like 'criminal' and 'corruption', where reasonable and moderate argument has been replaced by categorical and righteous moral judgement and where the accusations are inevitably shaped through dangerous metaphors of violence. Yet that is so much of what passes for politics these days, especially in the social or digital space. All of us have an opportunity—and, I'd say, an obligation—to see what's been occurring and to shift back in the direction of reasonableness and respect towards compassion for one another and tolerance of different views.

While I expect that some of our words spoken in this important debate at a time of profound national shock are nevertheless far away from what concerns Helen in the days immediately ahead, still I wanted to say something to the member for Indi. Dear Helen, the message in your first speech to your kids is the message we send to you. You are bold. You are brave. You are loved. The open-hearted strength of your family in the midst of their bewildering experience of shock and pain has been astonishing, a thing of beauty, an incredibly gracious gift to all of us at this time. Your community and your country holds you in its heart. Your colleagues in this place have thought about you and spoken about you without pause, reflecting on the example you set through your kindness, your earnest hard work, your decency and humour and your devotion to public service. In the week before last you raised with me the critical issue of protecting productive agricultural land even as we bring the enormous benefits of renewable energy and climate adaptation to rural and regional communities. This year it has again been a privilege to share with you the vital work in the cause of peace as co-conveners of the Parliamentary Friends of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Finally, I want you to know, Helen, that I've heard from many, many people in my Western Australian community who send their love and their best wishes to you and to your staff and to your family. Take care, my friend. Be well. See you here soon again.