The warning signs have been there in plain sight |
For more than a month, I'd kept a casual eye on happenings back home. Through the prism of distance, it all seemed like business as usual, apart from the tornado that ripped through a town near where I live.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
Login or signup to continue reading
Another interest rate hike, entirely predictable given the soaring cost of fuel. A feud over Tax Office plans to end credit card payments. Softening support for One Nation. A leadership change for the Greens. All of it accompanied by the customary breathless commentary designed to make dreary stories more compelling.
That all changed on Monday.
First, it was catching up with the disgraceful mockery of Senator Jacqui Lambie's health issues on One Nation's Please Explain cartoon. A new low had been plumbed with arrant nastiness dressed up by its creator as satire, which it was not.
Pauline Hanson brushed it off, saying Lambie should get over it and, the kicker, have a bit of a laugh. The hypocrisy made my teeth hurt. A few months ago, Hanson had cried orange murder over an equally imbecilic skit about her benefactor Gina Rinehart on an ABC reality show. Goose? Gander? Hello.
And then came the news about the attack on federal MP Helen Haines.
As the details emerged over the course of the evening, shock was overtaken by a dread sense of inevitability. The target was surprising because from what I'd seen, Helen Haines was hardly a polarising political figure - quite the opposite actually. But the act of apparent political violence itself wasn't. Not given the descent into rage this country and many others around the world have undergone this century.
The warning signs were there. The Cronulla Riot of 2005. The ugly anti-vaxxer protests during COVID with their nooses out for Dan Andrews. The Wieambilla and Porepunkah shootings. The Bondi massacre. Repeated studies showing polarisation intensifying and faith in democracy and our institutions in decline. And then the explosion in threats and harassment of our elected politicians.
At the centre of all this sits the sinister role played by social media. That once happy billboard for cute cat videos, family holiday snaps and photos of lunch has morphed into a toxic fever swamp of extremism from the left and the right and a marketplace for influencers hawking........