Cleeland calls threats sexualised and violent five weeks from Victorian election

Purcell reports threats after supporting federal MP Helen Haines

Nationals MP Annabelle Cleeland said threats against her had led her to share her live location with her husband and staff when on the road. Her electorate of Euroa covers 11,452 square kilometres. She told ABC Radio Melbourne on Thursday: “I don’t feel like I signed up for this job to put my children in harm’s way and, right now, I’m frightened about that.” Cleeland described the threats as sexualised and violent: “It’s sexualised, it’s violent and they target your weaknesses and your vulnerabilities – your children, your home.”

Upper house MP Georgie Purcell shared a statement on social media on Monday night in support of federal MP Helen Haines, who earlier that day had been allegedly attacked by a constituent in her regional Victorian electorate. Purcell’s Victorian upper house region partly overlaps with Haines’s federal electorate. She wrote that the alleged attack had “sent chills down her spine.” Being a woman in politics, she said, had changed the way she moved through the world – where she parked her car, which route she took home, even whether she held public events at all.

Two constituents responded to Purcell’s Haines statement. One said he wished the attack had happened to Purcell, and another, a little while later, said: “You should be scared.” Purcell reported both, saying there was “nothing else she can do” because the threats lack the specificity police require to take further action. The threats left her on “high alert” with just five weeks until the Victorian election. “One thing that is on my mind is there is 10 days of prepoll approaching where anyone who does want to undertake a targeted attack on a candidate or a member of parliament, it won’t be hard to work out where they are,” she said.

Purcell has received abuse, rape and death threats on social media throughout her four years in parliament, over her positions on issues including duck hunting and racing. Since beginning a relationship with federal Labor MP Josh Burns, she has had access to more security measures – not because she is a Victorian MP, but because her partner is a federal one.

In Canberra, the Australian Federal Police manage threats against federal MPs, building up intelligence about repeated behaviour and patterns over time. In Victoria, Purcell says, police deal with individual complaints separately. With a state election looming, that difference may be about to change.

On Wednesday, Victorian Premier Ben Carroll met with the Victorian electoral commissioner, Police Chief Commissioner Mike Bush and his cabinet to discuss stronger safety measures for MPs. Carroll told reporters: “This work will happen progressively and as soon as possible. What has happened must be a turning point for political debate in Victoria and around Australia. We must go forward with more respect and understanding of one another.” Earlier that morning, Bush said police were working to establish a centralized process for monitoring threats against MPs. “We want a single-stop shop to report these things and have the ability to be very proactive,” he said.

As of Thursday afternoon, changes had yet to be communicated to Victorian MPs, who had been asked to attend a briefing with police on Friday. For now, their only guidance remains a Tuesday morning email from the Department of Parliamentary Services advising them to monitor and control access to their electorate offices, check external areas on CCTV before leaving, and remember that a duress button is available in an emergency. The situation leaves MPs weighing the risk of being out in public with their constituents against the possibility that one may try to harm them.

Guardian Australia’s Victorian state correspondent Benita Kolovos reported that MPs across Victoria’s political spectrum – predominantly women – had said threats to their safety intensified during Victoria’s prolonged Covid lockdowns and had remained constant since. She wrote that hostility from constituents is not new for the state’s politicians, including its premiers.

During the pandemic, an effigy of then-premier Daniel Andrews was subjected to a mock execution on the front steps of parliament amid debate over pandemic legislation. The next day, Andrews said: “There are some people who are threatening me. They’re threatening my family. They are essentially attacking the safety of my family.” It is understood the premier was receiving around-the-clock close personal protection at the time.

During the 2022 election campaign, Andrews’s press conferences were largely kept out of public view. One exception, an event at a Caulfield dog park, drew a man intent on heckling him, and in 2023 another man faced court on charges of stalking and harassing Andrews. When Andrews resigned in 2024, he lost his security but remained as much a public figure. Recently, images of where he had been living appeared on the front page of a national newspaper.

His successor, Jacinta Allan, also faced much hostility, particularly in regional Victoria, where communities opposed the government’s emergency services levy and laws allowing state body VicGrid and its contractors access to private land for transmission projects without a landholder’s consent. At the 2025 Bush Summit – a day after the latter laws passed parliament – Allan was relentlessly heckled during her speech, including by an audience member who stood on her chair with a noose around her neck. Allan’s staff left in tears.

On other occasions, cars believed to be carrying the premier have been blocked or followed, only for those inside found to be staff members or other ministers – including at a press conference during the January bushfires. For six weeks, a mobile billboard carrying the message “ditch the witch” and AI-generated images of Allan travelled around Melbourne’s CBD before being reported. Each incident generated footage that was widely shared by the media and on social media. A former staff member of Allan’s said the former premier “legitimately feared for her safety” and added: “She would say ‘Someone is going to be killed.’”

Police Chief Commissioner Mike Bush announced on Wednesday morning, before Brendan Nugent’s court appearance in the Haines case, that police were working toward a centralized threat-reporting process, and MSI previously reported the plan in its coverage of that appearance. The reporting here adds Purcell’s and Cleeland’s accounts of the threats they face, Carroll’s meeting with Bush and the Victorian electoral commissioner, and the hostility directed at Victoria’s premiers.