We are about to enter a parliament week heavy with the weight of what happened to Helen Haines. We’ll hear about who and what is to blame, and what we all need to stop. And we do need to stop.

But the narrative that is emerging isn’t about what’s actually happening – it’s about silencing legitimate democratic dissent, and giving the status quo something to dig in around.

That shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been paying attention to Australia’s political debate.

Everyone is angry at politicians, all the time, but for different reasons. The left for feeling abandoned by the mainstream political left, which has shifted further to the right, and given legitimacy to bad faith attacks on motivations. The “centre” is miffed that it’s not seen as the most sensible and reasonable position at all times, and that its morally compromised position is becoming more and more obvious, and the right because it doesn’t have control over everything and is occasionally held to standards of accountability.

The anger is universal. The origins of it are not. The loudest message is to “turn down the temperature” or to “return to civility” not in the sense that we need to speak to everyone with a foundation of equal human dignity, but in the sense that everyone is to blame equally.

We are told to turn down the temperature by people who pose for selfies with Donald Trump or defend a genocide. That the........

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