A man has been charged with threatening an Australian lawmaker’s staff with nunchucks, police said Thursday, days after another legislator was critically injured when a man repeatedly hit her with a car. The incidents are heightening concerns about female politicians’ safety and raising concerns about security in a country where lawmakers are highly accessible to the public, reports the AP. Police say that a 56-year-old man entered Western Australian state government minister Hannah Beazley’s electorate office in suburban Perth on Wednesday, brandishing nunchucks and making verbal threats. Beazley wasn’t in the office at the time.
The man was charged with being armed in a way that may cause fear and with threatening to perform an unlawful act. He spent the night in custody and will appear in a Perth court later Thursday. There was no allegation the man’s behavior was connected to the driver who hit federal lawmaker Helen Haines with his car in Victoria on Monday. Haines’ alleged attacker, Brendan Nugent, appeared in court Wednesday charged with intentionally causing serious injury, dangerous driving causing serious injury, and causing harm to a federal official. He did not enter pleas and remains in custody. Police are still searching for a motive. Haines, a 65-year-old independent lawmaker, remained in critical condition Thursday in a Melbourne hospital where surgeons have amputated both legs.
Both incidents have raised concerns about the safety of female politicians, who account for a growing proportion of Australian lawmakers. Just under 50% of federal lawmakers and a majority of PM Anthony Albanese’s Cabinet are women. Australian lawmakers are some of the most accessible in the world, and political violence has been rare. But there are fears that increasingly toxic public debate driven by social media creates risks for elected women. Albanese said the Beazley threat, coming so soon after the Haines attack, was “just heartbreaking.” “We can have debate and disagreement, but … without descending into the sort of violence that we have seen in too many parts of the world,” Albanese told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. “It’s certainly not who we are as Australians.”
Hannah Beazley said she was in the state parliament when the man entered her office demanding to see her. Beazley said two members of her staff were “rattled,” but had remained safe behind a security screen. “We don’t know his motives at all,” she told reporters Wednesday. Governor-General Sam Mostyn, who is only the second woman to ever serve as the British monarch’s representative in Australia, said that she was abused on social media for speaking Wednesday alongside Haines’ husband, Phil Haines. “Like any woman who has stepped up into any position across any part of our society, there is a unique and pernicious form of attack that comes our way,” Mostyn told the ABC.