Bail denied after three charges in alleged office threat case
On Thursday, the 56-year-old Perth man was charged with being armed in a way that may cause fear, making unlawful threats and cannabis possession. The charges followed a Wednesday afternoon disturbance at Western Australian local government minister Hannah Beazley’s Victoria Park electorate office in Perth. He was refused bail to appear at Perth magistrates court on Thursday.
Electoral staff at the office called police after a man caused a disturbance. Police said they received reports that the man was making verbal threats while in possession of an “improvised martial arts weapon” described as “nunchucks.” Officers arrested the 56-year-old nearby and took him into custody.
Nobody was injured in the incident.
Beazley was not in the office at the time, but told reporters on Wednesday evening that her two staff members were “rattled” by the “confronting situation” (photograph: Richard Wainwright/AAP). She said the man was allegedly being very threatening and that she believed he wanted access to her, while saying they did not know his motivations at all.
She said the man allegedly attempted to lean through the security screen, but the staff were a safe distance away. “It’s not the first time I’ve had threats made against me,” Beazley said. Her primary concern was the welfare of her staff; she said the situation was very rattling for them and that they called police.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told Perth radio on Thursday that Hannah Beazley was a friend because he was “a good friend of her dad,” the former Labor defence minister Kim Beazley. He called threats against politicians “far too prevalent” and “not who we are as Australians,” adding that people could have their discussions and debates and settle those issues at the ballot box.
Governor-General Sam Mostyn, speaking generally on Thursday, discussed the gendered dynamics of threats and abuse directed at women in high-profile positions. She said women who stepped into positions across society faced “a unique and pernicious form of attack.”
Mostyn said she still received such abuse online and that she had been saddened that morning by comments on her Instagram page, written in capitals with expletives, that questioned the nature of her work. She said women across the country knew there were certain things “reserved for women” that “go to our gender” and were often “vicious and just despicable.”
The arrest came on Thursday, days after federal independent MP Helen Haines was hospitalised with severe injuries following an alleged attack with a 4WD outside her electorate office in Wangaratta, Victoria, earlier in the week. Haines lost both her legs following Monday’s alleged attack.
A community vigil for Haines was held in Wodonga on Wednesday evening after it was revealed that the MP had lost both her legs following the alleged attack.
Former independent MP Cathy McGowan, Haines’s predecessor as the federal member for Indi, attended the vigil and spoke on its sidelines (photograph: Mridula Amin/The Guardian). She said the community was grappling with “mixed emotions.” McGowan said she had spent time with Haines’s staff and that they were “all crying together because of the emotion that’s been building up.”
McGowan said the people at the vigil did not want violence, while cautioning that people in their communities could not be assumed to know what to do when violence occurred. She said there was a lot of violence in communities and online and that there was nothing new about it, but said the attack on Haines had brought home that “this is us.” She said people could not pretend that everything was “OK in the regions and we’re doing fine.”
The arrest came days after the alleged vehicle strike outside independent MP Helen Haines’s electorate office in Wangaratta, Victoria. In that case, the accused, Brendan Nugent, remains in custody after his court appearance ahead of a February committal mention, and Haines was struck by a vehicle outside her electorate office.