Just 24 hours after the alleged attack on Helen Haines, the impassioned calls for calm were still echoing when something posted on a government minister’s social media account shocked her.
Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek does not shock easily. She is used to threats, from a note slipped under her door hoping her children “die of painful cancers” to too many death and rape threats to count, the Labor MP said on prime-time TV on Tuesday.
Minister for Social Services Tanya Plibersek. Alex Ellinghausen
But the “industrial scale” and the “tenor” of recent abuse was different.
One particular comment posted the day after Haines was hit by a Toyota LandCruiser in an allegedly targeted attack outside her regional Victoria electoral office got to her.
“Yesterday, I posted something about Jacqui Lambie saying that I thought that the cartoon mocking her vaginal prolapse was in extremely poor taste,” Plibersek told the ABC’s 7.30.
“And 24 hours after I posted that, this afternoon, after this attack on Helen Haines, someone wrote under that post defending Jackie Lambie, ‘She deserves to meet a LandCruiser’.
“Now I don’t know what kind of person does that.”
Plibersek, speaking generally about politics, criticised a “lack of civility that’s crept into our debate” and echoed calls for politicians of all stripes to rethink their behaviour.
“You can have fierce arguments. You can disagree with someone quite profoundly. You don’t have to be abusive or belittling. You don’t have to use violent language,” she said in the interview.
“I think some of it is also driven, frankly, by the way social media operates.
“We know that algorithms reward outrage. The profits are there to be made by keeping people on the boil, and so I think all of us have a responsibility to do better.”
Helen Haines was hit by a car outside her office in Wangaratta. Alex Ellinghausen
Labor’s fight with big tech
Labor is pushing to force social media giants to give Australians the ability to opt out of algorithmic social media feeds, while aiming to protect users from harmful content online and expand the powers of the eSafety commissioner.
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor called out several issues with the bill, labelling it a “blank cheque for political censorship”.
Government ministers including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese have been quick to claim social media as a problem in the wake of the alleged attack on Haines.
But when asked, Plibersek resisted the chance to tie the proposed legislation directly to what happened to Haines, saying they were “discussions for another day”.
The minister also revealed she’d changed her behaviour in several ways in response to security concerns.
The owner of a barber next to Haines’ electoral office has been praised for helping stop the alleged attack. 9News
Those included not advertising street stalls on social media and waiting until after she’d left an event with no security to post a photo.
Stream of abuse in reply to Lambie support
Nine.com.au could not find the LandCruiser comment Plibersek mentioned, which might have been hidden. But replies to the minister’s post on X contain a stream of insults and abuse.
Most of the replies to Haines’ own latest post on X – coincidentally backing Lambie on reforms to freedom of information laws – were wishing her well in her recovery.
But one disturbing commented gloated about her being sent to intensive care.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, famously gutted the platform’s content moderation team after buying Twitter, now X, for $US44 billion in 2022.
Elon Musk is the world’s richest man. AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson
‘The consequences are real’: Study tracks abuse
A 2025 study by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre found while men and women in politics both suffered from online abuse, women were much more likely to cop “personal degrading attacks, sexist slurs, sexually explicit remarks, and attempts to silence and delegitimise them”.
In an analysis of the 2024 European Parliament election, they found 80 per cent of the candidates studied received toxic replies on X but women posted less and were targeted more.
“The consequences are real,” scientific officer Arianna Sala wrote in The Conversation, while noting it is a global problem.
“Scholars have linked online abuse to reduced re-election ambitions among female politicians, self-censorship, and women withdrawing from digital spaces altogether.
“When abuse shapes who runs for office, it shapes who governs.”
Liberal MP Andrew Hastie, appearing alongside Plibersek, expressed a similar sentiment on Tuesday night.
“I think, and I think Tanya would agree, we want people of talent coming into our parliament, and that’s why we’ve got to get this right, otherwise our country is poorer,” he told 7.30.
“Because without the best people serving in our parliament, we won’t get the best public policy outcomes for our nation.”
Andrew Hastie during question time at Parliament House in September. Alex Ellinghausen
He said he hadn’t changed his behaviour despite online abuse ramping up significantly in the past six months and stressed the importance of freedom of expression online, with limits.
“My concern is people being whipped up into a frenzy, and people at the margins who we can’t track, who show no signs of being a potential threat, end up taking action because it’s very easy to weaponise a car, a kitchen knife, a cricket bat, or anything else to take action against a public official,” he said.