The member for Indi has been a beacon of decency from the moment that she arrived in this place seven years ago—passionate about her community for sure, but thoughtful, curious and respectful of the opinions of others. Helen Haines is completely incapable of being nasty to anyone. Stuck in Canberra, watching the 2020 pandemic grand final together, between my beloved Cats and her beloved Tigers, even then, as Richmond started to dominate in the second half and I began to wallow in my own misery, Helen quietly slipped away, telling me afterwards that she didn't want to rub my nose in it. I mean, who does that? For most of us, football culture is about rubbing people's noses in. But, for Helen Haines, her humanity is defined by seeking to uplift those around her and not bring them down, and I suspect that, for almost everyone in this chamber at one point or another in our interaction with Helen, we've experienced that, which makes Monday's attack on Helen all the more shocking.

Over the last week, we've tried to make some sense of this—maybe it was an isolated, random, terrible event—and yet, somehow, that explanation feels inadequate. It was an extreme action, definitely, but maybe the public discourse of which we are all a part has a temperature which is too high, and maybe that elevates actions across the board, and just maybe, on the extremes, those actions can become dangerous. It's not just us. It's police. It's emergency service workers. It's frontline public servants. But, if all of that is true, then we all have a collective responsibility and a responsibility for our behaviour going forward.

Here is where Helen's example is so important for me, because, as we engage in the public debate and as those in the media give their opinions about the public debate, sometimes there is a reflex from many of us, me included, when our arguments are not so strong, to play the person—'the Prime Minister is this', 'the Leader of the Opposition is that', 'so-and-so is arrogant, weak, venal, a coward'. If analysis and reason don't quite get us there, then, if we deny the humanity of our opponent, we can still win. I've done it. We see it happen all the time, and we see it from the media in the way they describe us.

But I have never seen it from Helen Haines. It's as if she understands that to deny the humanity of an opponent is to cede the humanity of oneself, and I truly believe that, from Helen's perspective, she acknowledges the sincerity with which we all engage in our work, because, after all, we all want to improve the lives of our constituents. We all want to make Australia better, but we have different views about how to do that, which is healthy. It's appropriate that we prosecute those views robustly and that, at times, we do not give an inch, but it must be possible for us to do all of that whilst maintaining a fundamental respect for each other.

In the wake of the terrible event last Monday, it feels as though the whole country has come out and expressed how much they value what Helen Haines does. Yet the very idea of this parliament is that government is a collective act by all of us—that in acknowledging the value of what Helen does and, perhaps more importantly, in acknowledging the value of what our opponent does, therein lies the key to valuing what we do ourselves.

My thoughts are very much with Phil and Helen's family and, of course, Helen, our thoughts are very much with you. We wish you the speediest of recoveries, because our greatest wish is to see Helen Haines once again take her place on that bench.