The cardboard cockatoo, the empty seat and a parliament’s reckoning with rage

October 26, 2026 — 2:56pm

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An orange cardboard cockatoo was perched where Helen Haines would usually sit in the House of Representatives on Monday. Her colleagues placed it there in a nod to the woman they called the matriarch of the crossbench.

Cockatoos had been the symbol of Haines’ grassroots political campaign; she once explained that her regional Victorian electorate regarded them as a symbol of “community flocking together to build a vibrant democracy”.

Now the Australian parliament was being forced to reflect on what that meant.

Last week’s rare act of violence against one parliamentarian has prompted the rest of them to interrogate what’s holding Australia’s democracy together, what’s threatening it and what role we all play in that dynamic.

Seven days after Haines was deliberately struck by a car outside her office, MPs stood to share their reflections.

Not everyone had the answer – their diagnoses for rising violence spanned online polarisation, male aggression, media hostility, political language, poor mental health services – but there was one point on which all MPs agreed. If anyone modelled the type of person to maintain a respectful but robust public square, it was Haines.

When Haines woke after the surgery, having lost both her legs, her first words were concern for her staff and gratitude to first........

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