Helen Haines's electorate office is in Murphy Street, Wangaratta's main street. Most members of Parliament have their electorate offices in prominent locations and their names are emblazoned on the street-front windows.

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It is a statement: "I am here among you, to help you." When an electorate changes from one party to another or to an independent, the new MP invariably takes the electorate office of the former MP. It reinforces the statement, "This is a representative democracy, I represent you, irrespective of party."

Voters often seek help directly from federal MPs. Often their concerns are personal to them. They often come about through dealings with the bureaucracy. Often they concern state or even local government issues. Invariably, they come from ordinary voters who have neither the money nor the connections to use lawyers or lobbyists to get the result they want.

This is why yesterday's attack on Haines was such a grievous assault on our democracy. Most likely, it will result in yet further security measures that will do only more to isolate politicians from their communities - ironically the very alleged remoteness that so many on the political fringe complain about.

Where is this violence coming from? On Tuesday, another MP, the member for the ACT seat of Fenner, Andrew Leigh, asked that very question while giving the Joan Kirner Social Justice Oration.

He argues that many places, including Australia, have had cost-of-living pressures, inflation, and inequality in the past and there was not the same level of politically directed anger and violence that we are seeing today. The difference, he says, is not economic conditions but the way people receive their information.

Social media is now the number one source of news, displacing traditional media.

Traditional media had gatekeepers, sub-editors and news directors, who decided what would be published and its prominence and, more importantly,........

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