I rise to speak about this matter of public importance about the urgent need to prevent political violence and foster constructive and respectful public discourse. I'm absolutely shattered by what's happened to Dr Helen Haines, as are so many of the colleagues across the parliament. In the wake of this horrendous incident, I wanted to create a space in parliament for us to make sense of what's happened, to take a step back and to ask ourselves why the head of our security agencies has warned repeatedly of the rising risk of politically motivated violence; why the Prime Minister has urged the country, our leaders and our media to turn down the heat of political debate; why every day we seem to stray further from discourse that's respectful and constructive and fall instead into arguments and accusations that are hateful, abusive and inflammatory; and why we are then surprised when the hateful rhetoric bubbles into actual unbridled savage violence. What's going on here? Why are the bonds holding us together fraying?

Here's one possible reason. We move through digital worlds distorted by opaque algorithms that operate according to the whims of profit-seeking tech bros, and they wreak havoc because of the inability and unwillingness of governments to regulate them. The consequence is that we no longer share the same social world. We might walk down the same streets. We may shop in the same supermarkets and even send our kids to the same schools, but we do this all while inhabiting separate realms, separate bubbles. We've lost our common world—our shared understanding of social reality.

That shared understanding is absolutely critical to a functioning, cohesive society. Without it, we've got no civic space to meet and come together as equal citizens, where we listen to each other and exchange views with respect and tolerance. Increasing misogyny and violence are consequences of these ruptures in our social fabric. With each violent word and action, the tears become harder to repair, but there are things that we can do right now to begin mending them.

The starting principle is to choose people over profit, for governments to put the safety of the public ahead of the preferences of overseas tech lords. A digital duty of care—which will hopefully pass both houses soon—is a big step forward, and I commend the government for this reform, but we can't just blame previous governments for an unwillingness to regulate, and we can't just blame social media companies who are driven by a profit motive. We parliamentarians are also responsible. We fuelled this fire and now we have to douse it.

The quality of behaviour in parliament has become toxic, violent and inflammatory. We've let ourselves become hostages to the algorithms. We play by their tune. The objective of political discourse has become social media grabs, so politicians ape the outrage, the cheap shots and the anger that feed the algorithm and lay the foundations for physical violence. Yesterday—I feel upset to have to say this, but I have to get it on the record. Yesterday, the Leader of the Opposition—the alternative to the government—stood there and refused to acknowledge that our words in this place have consequences. They do. We all need to change the behaviour that we have in this place.

Violence has no place in democracy, but politicians will never be able to preach that important message unless we ourselves practise it in this building. We're staring down a very dark path otherwise. We've been comfortable in our confidence that Australia is not like other countries—that we are somehow immune from the violence that others experience routinely—but this conveniently ignores our past. Australia's history is peppered with irregular, but nonetheless significant, politically motivated attacks. More recent events, like the Bondi massacre, and now this attack on the member for Indi, are proving this wrong as well.

They show that we are not immune. We're standing on the brink of something very frightening, but we can step into a different future, and, as Helen's husband, Phil Haines, has implored us to do in recent days, we must. We cannot respond to this horrific event by returning to the status quo. We should do everything we can to ensure that the member for Indi's story is remembered as a turning point for our country, where we chart a new course towards civility in politics, towards respectful disagreement and towards collaborative and constructive governance, where people come first, not corporate profits. As Phil Haines put it, there is a rage boiling in the hearts of too many Australians, but you can choose to tame it or to inflame it, and it's for all of us to choose which one.