Perth man charged with ‘being armed in a way that may cause fear’ – days after Helen Haines was allegedly attacked with 4WD outside her Victorian office

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A man has been charged after allegedly threatening staff and wielding nunchucks at the electoral office of the Western Australian local government minister, Hannah Beazley.

The Perth incident came days after the federal independent MP Helen Haines was hospitalised with severe injuries following an alleged attack outside her electorate office in Wangaratta in Victoria on Monday.

AFP commissioner says MPs are generally concerned about growing volume of abuse and intimidation

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The head of the Australian federal police has condemned a “febrile” political environment that has seen one person charged every week over the alleged threatening of MPs, as Victoria announces new steps to protect politicians.

But the AFP and Victoria police insist they had no intelligence to suggest 43-year-old Brendan Nugent would go on to allegedly drive a Toyota LandCruiser into the independent MP Helen Haines in a targeted attack.

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‘No ongoing threat to community’: Victoria police

Mason tells journalists there is “nothing to indicate at this stage” that the two parties are known to each other, but police are still investigating.

I can provide some assurance to the community that we certainly do not have any intelligence that there is any further or ongoing threat to any other person or the broader community. We are treating this as an isolated incident at this point in time.

We’ve still got a lot to work through here. As you can imagine, it’s been quite dynamic this afternoon. We’ve got quite an extensive crime scene.

We have investigators present and they’ll continue to work through and try and collect all available evidence to ascertain exactly what has occurred and how it has occurred. We’ve got the Major Collision Investigation Unit who are currently en route from Melbourne.