Today my thoughts and the thoughts of the Jagajaga community are with Helen. Helen, since I met you, when we were first elected in 2019, I have valued your kindness and your compassion. I have immense respect for the way you conduct yourself in this place and in your community. On a personal level, you welcomed me warmly into your home, together with the member for Macnamara, when we were driving through your beautiful electorate to get to Canberra. There was no prior arrangement, demonstrating your true hospitality and warmth, allowing us to drop in.

Recently we've had conversations about how you've been upgrading the garden there with more vegetable and flower beds and how much satisfaction that has brought you. I've commented many times on how I felt reassured when I was pregnant in this place because you were on hand with your professional skill and compassion. We've been working closely together in recent months on one of your other passions—the National Anti-Corruption Commission. As chair of the parliamentary committee overseeing the NACC, I have greatly appreciated your commitment, as deputy chair, to making sure that that institution is strong and robust and that it plays the part it should in our democracy.

What happened to Helen should not happen to anyone. As I've reflected on it over the last few days, I've found myself thinking about how much the environment for elected representatives has changed since Helen and I were first elected seven years ago. Politics has never been a profession that's short on strong views, nor should it be. People care passionately about the issues that affect their lives, and they should be able to disagree with us. They should be able to challenge us. That is part of democracy. But something feels different now. The temperature is higher. Increasingly, people approach political issues and they approach MPs in a heightened way. Anger sits much closer to the surface. Interactions that once might have involved disagreement can now feel more confrontational.

I'd be lying if I said it doesn't affect me. I worry about my staff. I worry about all of our staff. The people who work in our offices are smart and committed. They're caring people. They spend their days helping people navigate government systems. They did not sign up to be abused or threatened. As a parent, I found myself having conversations with my children that I never expected to have—conversations about safety, conversations about why people can sometimes be angry at politicians. These are not easy conversations to have with your kids. But, despite all of that, the thing I value most about this job remains exactly the same as it was when I started.

Like Helen, I value being out in our community. I value being able to attend community events, sporting clubs and local festivals. This last weekend it was the Diwali festival in Eltham. I value having conversations with people in supermarkets, cafes and shopping strips. I value hearing people's stories, hearing their frustrations, hearing their hopes and learning from them. These moments of connection are not just a nice part of the job; they are the job. Representative democracy only works when we can remain connected to the people we represent, and that is why what happened to Helen is so troubling. The risk is not only that people feel unsafe. The risk is that these types of things slowly erode the connections that are at the heart of our democracy.

I know this is not something that only affects politicians. When I talk to teachers, health workers, retail workers, emergency service workers and people on the front line of public services, many tell similar stories. They too are experiencing more aggression, more abuse and more anger than they did a decade ago. It's making many jobs harder, and I think it points to a broader challenge for all of us. At a time when there are so many forces pulling people apart, we need to work harder to bring people together. We need more opportunities for genuine conversation, more opportunities to listen, more opportunities to disagree respectfully and more opportunities to see the humanity in people who may hold different views from our own. When people know one another, when they sit down together, when they share their experiences, it becomes much harder to treat one another with contempt, and Helen demonstrates this every day. The people in Helen's community demonstrated this when they came to her aid.

The answer to what happened to Helen is not to retreat from our communities. The answer is to strengthen the connections that hold our communities together. So today, together with so many, I place on the record my support for Helen and the support of my community for Helen, for her husband, Phil, for her family and for her staff. I know the road ahead will not be easy, but we will welcome you back here, and I hope it's soon. I want to say that, despite the challenges, despite the heightened environment we are all navigating, I still believe deeply in the value of community, in the value of conversation and in the value of human connection. These things are not a soft alternative to democracy; they are democracy. If there is one lesson we should take from you, Helen, and your example, it is that we need more connection and kindness.