In the last sitting week Helen Haines and I sat together on the crossbench during a division. We talked about how important it is in this job to look after our health. Helen told me how much she was looking forward to at the end of the year, to slowing down and spending time with her family. None of us imagined that days later she would be fighting for her life. Helen is alive, and her condition is improving. Her husband Phil has told us that her heart and her mind remain strong. Anyone who knows Helen knows that to be true. She has spent her life caring for others as a nurse, as a midwife, as a researcher and as a representative.

Now it is our turn to care for her. My thoughts are with Phil, their family, Helen's staff and the people of Wangaratta and across Indi. In a regional community where people know one another, grief does not stop at one front door. It reaches into many homes. I thank the bystanders, paramedics and medical teams who came to Helen's aid. A great deal has been said this past week about what happened to Helen and what it means for us. Before this becomes a story about us, let us give Helen, her family and her community room to heal and leave the facts to the police and the courts.

I thank the member for Bradfield for this matter. Violence, threats and intimidation have no place in our democracy, whoever is targeted, and we've seen political violence in places and what it can do to communities and to countries. We've seen that in Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen, Syria, and, of course, currently in France. But prevention cannot only be about protecting ourselves, our offices and our online spaces. Those matter, but if this conversation begins and ends with us, we will have missed something. Prevention must also be about what happens in our communities long before anything reaches a crisis.

I'm not speaking about any individual case. Most people living with mental illness are never violent and are far more likely to be harmed than to harm others. But there's a hard truth we have avoided. Over decades we rightly move people with severe mental illness out of institutions and into the community. What we never fully built was the community care to go with it. For someone living with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or psychosis, a phone line is not enough. They need a psychiatrist who follows up, medication that is monitored, stable housing and someone who notices when things are slipping.

When that care falls away, the person suffers first. Their family suffers and sometimes, tragically, so do innocent people. Two and a half years ago, six people were killed at Westfield Bondi Junction. The New South Wales coroner found the man responsible had received good care for years, but, when warning signs of relapse appeared, they were not acted on. For nearly five years he was effectively lost to follow up. So whose responsibility is that?

Today, the honest answer is that government should be taking responsibility, but they are not. The Commonwealth funds GPs and psychologists. The state runs hospitals and crisis teams. People with severe mental illness fall into the gap between them, what experts called the missing middle. The Productivity Commission found the National Mental Health Agreement is not effective and the system is fragmented and out of reach for many. It wants a new agreement in place by June 2027. That is our window, and the Commonwealth must lead.

I ask the government to do three things. First, make someone clearly responsible with funding attached for community care for people with severe mental illness so no-one is discharged into nothing. Second, guarantee follow up. When someone leaves hospital, stops treatment or drops out of care, there must be a clinician whose job it is to notice and act. Third, make the care reachable in communities like Fowler, where around three in four people speak a language other than English at home. That means interpreters, culturally appropriate care and support for families who are often the first to see the warning signs and the last to know where to turn. None of this replaces responding to credible threats or enforcing the law, nor does it excuse us from how we conduct ourselves. We can argue firmly without humiliating each other and challenge a policy without encouraging hatred of the person behind it. Helen has always shown us how. Let us take it seriously for ourselves and for every family in every community we represent.