{"id":935531,"date":"2026-10-21T00:24:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T00:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/935531\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T00:24:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T00:24:16","slug":"helen-haines-update-tanya-plibersek-reveals-cruel-comment-on-jacqui-lambie-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/935531\/","title":{"rendered":"Helen Haines update: Tanya Plibersek reveals cruel comment on Jacqui Lambie post"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just 24 hours after the alleged attack on Helen Haines, the impassioned calls for calm were still echoing when something posted on a government<\/a> minister\u2019s social media<\/a> account shocked her.<\/p>\n

Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek does not shock easily.\u00a0 She is used to threats, from a note slipped under her door hoping her children<\/a> \u201cdie of painful cancers\u201d to too many death<\/a> and rape threats to count, the Labor MP said on prime-time TV on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Minister for Social Services Tanya Plibersek.\u00a0Alex Ellinghausen<\/p>\n

But the \u201cindustrial scale\u201d and the \u201ctenor\u201d of recent abuse<\/a> was different.<\/p>\n

One particular comment posted the day after Haines was hit by a Toyota LandCruiser in an allegedly targeted attack outside her regional Victoria<\/a> electoral office got to her.<\/p>\n

\u201cYesterday, I posted something about Jacqui Lambie saying that I thought that the cartoon mocking her vaginal prolapse was in extremely poor taste,\u201d Plibersek told the ABC\u2019s 7.30.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd 24 hours after I posted that, this afternoon, after this attack on Helen Haines, someone wrote under that post defending Jackie Lambie, \u2018She deserves to meet a LandCruiser\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNow I don’t know what kind of person does that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plibersek, speaking generally about politics, criticised a \u201clack of civility that\u2019s crept into our debate\u201d and echoed calls for politicians of all stripes to rethink their behaviour.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou 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,\u201d she said in the interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think some of it is also driven, frankly, by the way social media operates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Helen Haines was hit by a car outside her office in Wangaratta.\u00a0Alex Ellinghausen<\/p>\n

Labor\u2019s fight with big tech<\/p>\n

Labor is pushing to force social media giants to give Australians the ability to opt out of algorithmic social media feeds<\/a>, while aiming to protect users from harmful content online and expand the powers of the eSafety commissioner.<\/p>\n

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor called out several issues with the bill, labelling it a \u201cblank cheque for political censorship\u201d. <\/p>\n

Government ministers including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese<\/a> have been quick to claim social media as a problem in the wake of the alleged attack on Haines.<\/p>\n

But when asked, Plibersek resisted the chance to tie the proposed legislation directly to what happened to Haines, saying they were \u201cdiscussions for another day\u201d.<\/p>\n

The minister also revealed she\u2019d changed her behaviour in several ways in response to security concerns.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The owner of a barber next to Haines\u2019 electoral office has been praised for helping stop the alleged attack.\u00a09News<\/p>\n

Those included not advertising street stalls on social media and waiting until after she\u2019d left an event with no security to post a photo.<\/p>\n

Stream of abuse in reply to Lambie support<\/p>\n

Nine.com.au could not find the LandCruiser comment Plibersek mentioned, which might have been hidden. But replies to the minister\u2019s post on X contain a stream of insults and abuse.<\/p>\n

Most of the replies to Haines\u2019 own latest post on X \u2013 coincidentally backing Lambie on reforms to freedom of information laws \u2013 were wishing her well in her recovery.<\/p>\n

But one disturbing commented gloated about her being sent to intensive care.<\/p>\n

Elon Musk<\/a>, the world\u2019s richest man, famously gutted the platform\u2019s content moderation team after buying Twitter, now X, for $US44 billion in 2022.<\/p>\n

\"Elon<\/p>\n

Elon Musk is the world\u2019s richest man.\u00a0AP Photo\/Julia Demaree Nikhinson<\/p>\n

\u2018The consequences are real\u2019: Study tracks abuse<\/p>\n

A 2025 study by the European Commission\u2019s Joint Research<\/a> Centre found while men and women in politics<\/a> both suffered from online abuse, women were much more likely to cop \u201cpersonal degrading attacks, sexist slurs, sexually explicit remarks, and attempts to silence and delegitimise them\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In an analysis<\/a> 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe consequences are real,\u201d scientific officer Arianna Sala wrote in The Conversation, while noting it is a global problem.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cScholars have linked online abuse to reduced re-election ambitions among female politicians, self-censorship, and women withdrawing from digital spaces altogether.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen abuse shapes who runs for office, it shapes who governs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liberal MP Andrew Hastie, appearing alongside Plibersek, expressed a similar sentiment on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d he told 7.30.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause without the best people serving in our parliament, we won’t get the best public policy outcomes for our nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Andrew Hastie during question time at Parliament House in September.\u00a0Alex Ellinghausen<\/p>\n

He said he hadn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy concern is people being whipped up into a frenzy, and people at the margins who we can\u2019t track, who show no signs of being a potential threat, end up taking action because it\u2019s very easy to weaponise a car, a kitchen knife, a cricket bat, or anything else to take action against a public official,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just 24 hours after the alleged attack on Helen Haines, the impassioned calls for calm were still echoing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":935532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-935531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=935531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/935532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=935531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=935531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=935531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}