Episode Details

There's a text here, "talk about a beat up by ZB on politicians and threats. If you raise the possibility and keep flagging potential problems, you may get what you predict. So stupid to highlight this on your news at this time," says Paul. I don't think that's true. I think there are very, very, very few people worldwide, even with all the problems that abound, that would act in the way that this 43 year old Australian has done. Very few. But what people need to understand is that violent words, violent rhetoric can breed violent actions, and it may help temper the kind of madness that you see online. And the attack on the Australian independent MP Helen Haines is absolutely horrific, and it will make the news. It is newsworthy.  

The 43 year old man has been charged with a number of serious offences in relation to the attack, which was brutal and premeditated. Haines was unloading her car outside her electoral office when the man did a U turn and ran into her a number of times with his Land Cruiser, crushing her between the two vehicles. It wasn't a one off, it wasn't a moment of madness, it was several moments of madness. She has lost one leg, doctors are fighting to save the other, and in a cruel irony, it appears the man was a family friend. His father and stepmother have been friends with Haines for more than 20 years.  

She certainly sounds like one of the good guys, one of the very people you want to attract to Parliament. She had a life before entering Parliament, she was a nurse, a mother, an advocate for the rural community, and then once elected she led an anti corruption campaign within Parliament. It was a senseless, cruel attack on a good woman.  

And our MPs must have had a shiver go down their spines because many of them have been on the receiving end of personal attacks and death threats. My own MP, Dan Bidois, had to bring in the police when he received death threats that were deemed credible. Dan is a hardworking MP, a dad of two little ones, he's always at the local community events, does an amazing job for his constituents, but for whatever reason, probably because he had the temerity to stand for National, he received death threats. Speaker of the House Gerry Brownlee says they are well aware of the threats to MPs and even to candidates, and they take it very seriously. 

"Massive increase in threats to members of Parliament, particularly to women members of Parliament. And I think it's also the nature of those threats has changed from, you know, it might have been a bit of personal abuse about how someone presented themselves or other such, right down to now increasingly threats of physical violence as well. We've had to respond, we've set up a unit called the Security Intelligence Research Advisory Service, SIRAS, and they've got a team that will go out and be with MPs, they've deployed quite considerably during this period. But it's also candidates out there, and I think the work we've been able to do with the New Zealand Police, and I've got to take my hat off to them, I think they've done a great job in contacting all candidates and giving them personal numbers to be able to call should they feel threatened. Because, you know, you just don't know, you can't blanket everybody all the time, but you certainly need to have something that makes it very clear that if people are out of line, they're going to get prosecuted or at least deterred." 

And they do need to be prosecuted and deterred because that angry, angry rhetoric, that violent rhetoric can lead to physical assaults. I mean, look at James Shaw, he's one of the more reasonable, hardworking, lovely MPs, whatever you think of his politics, assaulted by a man in the street and needed hospital attention when he was in Parliament. And a lot of people throw off at the fact that Jacinda Ardern lives offshore with her family, well, in large part that's because of the truly horrif