WHEN POLITICAL HATRED BECOMES NORMAL, WE HAVE LOST SOMETHING FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN AN ARGUMENT.

I’ve been a regular contributor on social media for 17 years plus years. I’ve witnessed plenty of political arguments, disagreements, insults & pile-ons. But the vitriol, hatred, aggression & downright moronic accusations have gone too far.

 

Yesterday on X was one of the worst days I’ve ever experienced on the platform.

 

And before anyone starts pointing fingers at the left, STOP. It wasn’t the left. It was the RIGHT side of the political divide.

 

And that makes what I’m about to say all the more important.

 

Because what I experienced yesterday, unpleasant as it was, is merely a symptom of something far more disturbing. A political culture in which hostility is increasingly normalised, personal attacks are treated as legitimate debate & hatred is too often mistaken for conviction.

 

And we are now witnessing where that culture can lead.

 

An allegedly deliberate attack on independent MP Helen Haines comes against an alarming escalation in threats against Australian politicians.

 

As reported by The Australian, the AFP investigated 1,067 threats against elected officials in 2025–26, more than 100 above the previous year. The govt has committed an additional $150 million to protecting MPs.

 

The newspaper also reported that a 2025 survey found 85% of federal MPs & their staff had experienced violent, threatening or volatile behaviour, with almost half reporting incidents more than once a month.

 

ASIO’s Mike Burgess warned some time ago that the risk of politically motivated violence was already “flashing red”.

 

We’ve seen where this can lead overseas. Politicians murdered in Britain & the United States. Threats escalating into actual violence.

 

And yet, even as Helen Haines lies critically injured in hospital, people on X cannot put aside their political hatred long enough to demonstrate some basic human decency.

 

Even expressions of solidarity between political opponents are met with attacks.

 

Think about that for a moment.

 

A politician is fighting for her life, & some people’s immediate response is not concern for another human being, but an opportunity to continue their political warfare.

 

When did political disagreement become permission to abandon our humanity?

 

You don’t have to like a politician. You don’t have to agree with their policies. You can question their competence, challenge their decisions & hold them accountable. Indeed, we should.

 

But somewhere along the way, legitimate political scrutiny has become entangled with something altogether uglier.

 

Contempt for the individual.

 

And frankly, why would anyone want to step forward to serve this country knowing the sort of treatment that is now becoming par for the course?

 

When hatred becomes normalised, when cruelty is applauded & when people are treated as legitimate targets simply because of their politics, we are heading somewhere very dangerous.

 

And don’t tell me it’s only the other side doing it. Yesterday demonstrated otherwise.

 

This isn’t about left versus right. It never was. But unfortunately, that is exactly what people in this country have turned it into.

 

You only have to read some of the political declarations in social media biographies to see how thoroughly political allegiance has become entwined with personal identity.

 

And it’s not simply declarations of political loyalty. Some openly proclaim their hatred of those on the other side.

 

Hatred has become something to advertise. Almost a badge of honour.

 

Well, now we’re confronting what happens when that hatred is allowed to flourish, when hostility becomes normalised & the boundaries between political disagreement and personal animosity disappear.

 

And it’s ugly. It’s frightening. And we should be deeply concerned about where it might lead.

 

I don’t doubt that some of the hostility online is amplified by anonymous accounts, coordinated activity & bots. But we cannot conveniently blame everything on unseen manipulators.

 

Far too much of it comes from real people, making conscious decisions about what they say, what they share & how they treat others.

 

People who would presumably expect compassion, understanding & basic decency if tragedy struck their own families.

 

Yet somehow those same considerations disappear when the person suffering happens to hold different political views.

 

And that is what I find so profoundly disturbing.

 

We seem increasingly incapable of separating what someone believes politically from their fundamental worth as a human being.

 

This is no longer simply about political disagreement. It’s about the erosion of respect, compassion & the moral boundaries that should define a civilised society.

 

And we have lost sight of those boundaries.

 

Worse still, too many no longer seem to recognise why they mattered in the first place.

 

Because when we can look at another humanbeing lying critically injured in a hospital bed & see a political label before we see a person, we haven’t just lost the ability to disagree respectfully.

 

We’ve lost sight of our own humanity.

 

JESS WILSON & THE ART OF NOT TAKING THE BAIT

I made a mistake yesterday when I managed to wedge myself over Victorian politics.

I was very quick off the mark in criticising Labor over its abortion funding announcement. So when Victorian Liberal Leader Jess Wilson responded by matching Labor’s commitment, I felt obliged to criticise her in the same vein.

And therein lay my problem.

I hadn’t examined the detail of either announcement.

Inadvertently, my comments prompted some pretty nasty responses attacking Wilson, along with the usual tiresome Uniparty garbage.

So rather than exacerbate the situation, I deleted both posts & went back to the drawing board. Which is precisely what I should have done in the first place.

A little more examination & a little less haste would have served me considerably better.

I don’t live in Victoria, but I support Jess Wilson because I believe Victoria desperately needs a change of government after years of Labor’s economic mismanagement, mounting debt & some very questionable decisions.

And that brings me to the question I should have been asking yesterday.

What is Wilson actually trying to achieve, & why?

Because having examined her announcement more carefully, I think there’s considerably more political strategy involved than many of her critics are prepared to acknowledge.

Labor’s announcement was not simply about providing funding for abortion services. It also provided an obvious opportunity to turn reproductive rights into an election issue & portray the Coalition as a potential threat to women’s healthcare.

Particularly given the prospect of a minority government & the possibility of One Nation holding some influence.

Wilson responded quickly by matching Labor’s commitment to provide up to $30 million over four years to eliminate out-of-pocket expenses for abortion care up to 16 weeks.

And in doing so, she substantially blunted Labor’s immediate political attack.

That’s the first strategic consideration. Neutralising the political wedge.

Had Wilson opposed the funding, Labor could have spent weeks, if not months, campaigning on the suggestion that women’s reproductive rights were under threat from a Coalition government.

Instead, Wilson made it considerably harder for Labor to sustain that particular argument.

But there’s a much bigger consideration.

Victoria faces enormous economic challenges. Its debt, public services, infrastructure commitments, housing pressures & the broader consequences of years of Labor government should be central to the coming election.

The last thing the Coalition needs is to spend the election campaign defending itself against allegations about social policies rather than prosecuting its case against Labor’s record.

And that’s the second strategic consideration.

Keeping the election focused on the issues that may ultimately determine Victoria’s future.

Then there’s One Nation.

Whether people like it or not, the possibility of a hung parliament raises legitimate questions about the influence minor parties might exercise over a future government.

By making an explicit commitment to maintain Victoria’s existing abortion laws & supporting the funding announcement, Wilson is establishing her own position rather than allowing Labor or One Nation to define it for her.

That doesn’t eliminate every question about future parliamentary negotiations, but it does make her position considerably clearer.

And that brings me to another distinction that seems to have been lost in much of the commentary.

Wilson is not changing Victoria’s abortion laws.

Abortion was decriminalised in Victoria in 2008.

The funding commitment addresses the out-of-pocket costs associated with accessing an existing legal healthcare service. It does not change the legal framework or remove the existing requirements governing later-term abortions.

That distinction matters.

Of course, some people have genuine moral objections to abortion or to taxpayer funding of abortion services. They are entitled to those views, & I don’t dismiss them.

But abortion is legal in Victoria, which raises a separate question. To what extent should an individual’s moral objections determine whether another person can obtain financial assistance for a lawful medical service?

That’s a legitimate debate in its own right. But first, we should at least be discussing what has actually been announced rather than what some people imagine has been announced.

Which brings me to the inevitable cries of Uniparty.

Oh, please.

Political parties can agree on individual policies without being interchangeable.

Supporting one Labor funding commitment does not mean Wilson has adopted Labor’s economic agenda, its approach to governance, its management of public finances or its broader political philosophy.

Nor does it mean she has surrendered the Liberal Party’s identity.

If we reach the point where an opposition must automatically reject every government proposal simply because the government proposed it, we’ve abandoned political judgement in favour of tribal loyalty.

And I would have thought we’d had more than enough of that.

There is also the question of leadership.

Wilson has undoubtedly exposed herself to criticism from some within her own political constituency.

But leadership isn’t simply about satisfying every faction or reinforcing every existing belief among your supporters.

Sometimes it requires recognising that the wider electorate has different priorities, that not every political battle needs to be fought & that winning government requires persuading people who don’t already vote for you.

That doesn’t mean abandoning principles.

It means exercising judgement about which battles matter, which compromises are reasonable & what is ultimately necessary to achieve the larger objective.

Because the Liberal Party cannot change the direction of Victoria from the opposition benches.

Now, none of that means Wilson’s decision should escape scrutiny.

There is a legitimate question about whether committing $30 million over four years is justified when Victoria faces such considerable fiscal pressure.

And that question deserves an answer.

But it must also be weighed against the evidence of genuine financial barriers to accessing healthcare, particularly for women living in regional Victoria.

It’s very easy to focus on budgets, expenditure & the cost of government programs when we’re not personally affected by the health issue involved.

Perhaps sometimes we’re a little too quick to do so.

That doesn’t mean abandoning fiscal responsibility. It means recognising that responsible government also involves making judgements about the consequences of not providing a service.

The question isn’t simply whether Victoria can afford to spend the money.

It’s whether the expenditure is justified, whether it will deliver the intended outcomes & how it compares with other demands on the public purse.

Those are reasonable questions to ask of both Labor & the Coalition.

And then there’s the question of whether Wilson has actually neutralised Labor’s strategy.

Not entirely.

Labor can still campaign on reproductive rights, the possibility of minority government & divisions within the Coalition.

But Wilson has made it considerably harder to portray her as opposing this particular healthcare funding commitment.

And this is where I think Liberal supporters who have been attacking her need to look a little harder at what she’s trying to achieve.

Yesterday’s announcement was tactical.

In the overall scheme of what Wilson is seeking to change in Victoria, it’s a relatively modest financial commitment in the context of the state’s overall budget, although that doesn’t automatically make it justified or remove the obligation to scrutinise it.

It’s a decision designed to remove a potential political distraction & return the election debate to Labor’s record in government.

Whether it succeeds remains to be seen.

But for the time being, Wilson has blunted Labor’s wedge, even if she hasn’t eliminated it.

I just hope that in doing so she isn’t subjected to the sort of kneejerk reaction I was guilty of yesterday.

Because there is a real danger that supporters, in their determination to defend every ideological position, end up damaging the very leader they need to win government.

Political leadership isn’t about fighting every battle your opponent invites you to fight.

It’s about knowing which battles matter, which can be set aside & which must be won.

I made the mistake yesterday of reacting before thinking.

Having now examined the detail, I think Jess Wilson may have demonstrated considerably more political judgement than I initially gave her credit for.

And I’m quite prepared to say so.

But I wonder how many of those attacking her have actually examined the detail, considered the political strategy or stopped to think about the consequences of their reaction.

Because if voters punish Wilson on the basis of a headline rather than an informed assessment, & that contributes to another Labor victory, what exactly will they have achieved?