Making sense of the senseless

Try as you might, you can’t make sense of the chaos in which random acts of violence occur. Chaos is unstructured — it has no rules. So when the inexplicable happens, we are hard-wired to ask “why”? if only to protect ourselves against reoccurrence. But to answer is impossible.

The brutality and savagery of the 19 October 2026 assault on Helen Haines, the federal member for Indi in northern Victoria, was as unpredictable as it was unprovoked. It was profoundly disturbing, yet elicited from the people of Wangaratta the care, compassion, empathy and sympathy towards Helen and her family that make us all proud of our fellow citizens. The Governor-General’s presence at Helen’s hospital in Melbourne was emblematic of that. There is, in our community, a decency and humanity that responds immediately and with effect to cruelty and violence.

But decency and humanity don’t anticipate or prevent violence. Or do they?

On Monday of last week, we were treated to a Parliamentary outpouring of shock and concern, some of it sensitive and sincere, some of it sanctimonious, some of it self-serving (it is politics, after all), and some of it in denial. Some politicians refuse to see themselves and their behaviours as part of the problem, notwithstanding the repeated admonitions of the Director General of Security counselling a reduction in the invective and temperature of our national political discourse.

When news of the attack on Helen Haines broke, we were quickly treated to learned commentary that did little more than leap to premature conclusions.

Yet, as the preliminary police investigations unfolded in Wangaratta, it seemed that few, if any, of those features of the global problem were at play in the attack on Helen Haines. The attacker’s legal counsel has claimed that his client suffers “idiopathic transverse myelitis”, a neurological condition affecting the spinal cord for which there is as yet no identified cause or explanation. It may be associated with mental illness, but again the evidence is inconclusive.

Prime Minister Albanese described the incident as a “deliberate act”. That seems self-evident, given that the attacker drove his vehicle at Helen twice, crushing her against the rear of her own car. So far, however, the police have been careful not to get ahead of themselves, remaining prudently cautious on issues of motive, motivation and grievance. Nor have the police investigators gone beyond describing the attack as “an isolated incident” and, apart from technical charges relating to dangerous driving, intentionally causing serious injury and harming a Commonwealth public official, the police have not laid terrorism charges.

To substantiate charges of terrorism or politically motivated violence, the police need evidence.

I managed the coordination of Commonwealth policy on terrorism and politically motivated violence for half a decade in the late 80s and early 90s. Then, as now, our biggest worry was the loner coming from nowhere, suffering mental illness and harbouring imagined grievance. As we saw in Wangaratta, you don’t need a bomb or a gun. A motor vehicle can be lethal. Then, as now, we recognised that intelligence assessment could identify the risk of lone actors, but had no way of collecting usable intelligence on lone actors or providing comprehensive protection to the many holders of public office who might conceivably be targets. In a world that is increasingly chaotic, prevention is increasingly elusive.

It is becoming ever more evident, however, that otherwise unforeseeable and unpreventable acts occur in a context, and the deeper our understanding of the context, the more likely we are to further moderate the risk. This is where the attack on Helen Haines takes on additional poignancy, because decency and humanity generate both prevention and resilience.

There are systemic pathologies at play in Australia that increase the risk of violence to women, especially those who are providers of health and medical services, public officials, holders of high office, and a plethora of others who are either publicly exposed (the Jewish community celebrating Hannukah, First Peoples commemorating Invasion Day, or referees at kids’ sporting events, for instance) or publicly visible (such as marshals involved in crowd control).

Misogyny and racism combine in very complex ways to endanger women everywhere, particularly First Peoples women politicians and MPs from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Pacific. But when these two particular pathologies are fuelled by high levels of political partisanship as expressed through intemperate language and invective, through over-stimulated male bonding (such as the manosphere congregating on the internet) or through ideological rhetoric at extremist gatherings, women are at even greater risk while the source of the risk remains invisible.

The failure here is not in the intelligence and law enforcement agencies, but in the normalisation and legitimisation of violence in the media and by political leaders. Images of destruction — in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and Tehran, of the “cockroaches” being beaten by Indian police, the deployments of the National Guard and ICE operatives in the US, the riots in France and the incineration of national monuments — are daily TV fare. President Trump’s invective in calling for bombing countries back to the stone age, his cage fight on the White House lawns, his obscenities and profanities, especially towards women, and the highly febrile nature of US politics as currently conducted — all contribute to an increasingly dangerous social environment for women.

And Trump’s rallies are something else altogether: he encourages his MAGA boosters to assault women protesters while he hurls abuse at them and applauds the violent hooligans who kick and punch them.

None of this is the fault of women, but of national and international leaders across the board, whether in politics, business, sport, the arts or universities. And it is not for women to fix. Our politicians and community leaders need to model the behaviours consistent with a tolerant, inclusive and respectful society. And for senior politicians to use terms like “robust”, “rigorous” and “adversarial vigour” in describing political discourse is to condone aggression and confrontation by hiding behind codified language. “Robust debate” is code for abusive invective. “Respectful debate” signals inclusive discussion.

By changing the context within which those vulnerable to random attacks need to carry out their duties, we may succeed in reducing the risk. In a world where the rules are being trashed where they are not simply ignored, the re-creation of a viable rules-based consensus that protects and advocates decency and humanity is the critical challenge for those who would be national and/or global leaders. Not many are up to the challenge, it would seem.

Allan Behm works in The Australia Institute’s International and Security Affairs program.