MP Helen Haines in Critical Condition After Deliberate Attack

Local MP Helen Haines is being treated at Melbourne's The Alfred hospital with critical lower body injuries after being hit by a vehicle in a deliberate attack outside her electorate office in Wangaratta yesterday afternoon.

A 43-year-old man has been taken into custody. Haines's husband, Phil, and their family are maintaining a bedside vigil.

A Life of Service

At 65 years old, Helen Haines was starting to talk about what comes next after dedicating years of service to her community as a former nurse and MP. About to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary next month, she and her husband Phil had just welcomed another grandchild.

With a new baby to adore, she told friends she would have loved to live closer to see those first smiles, to savour the newborn baby smell and care for her family as a doting nanna.

History-Making Win

Haines made history in 2019, becoming the first independent to succeed another, winning the rural Victorian seat after the retirement of Cathy McGowan. Both independent MPs had ridden a wave of grassroots support that began in 2012, when a group of locals formed the Voices for Indi group.

The collection of supporters were instrumental in McGowan's 2013 hard-fought election victory, which broke the Liberals' 82-year hold on the seat. When McGowan handed over the baton in 2019, Haines continued to buck the trend, cementing the seat's independent status.

Regional Issues at Heart of Her Work

Unlike the group of independents in affluent metro seats, Haines's climate change focus had centred on the immediate threat that it posed to farming and regional survival. Integrity was at the heart of her political message from the outset.

In her maiden speech, she advocated for a robust federal integrity commission, which she said would "restore the trust that so many Australians have lost".

Haines's draft model was integral to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) created in 2023. She later served as the deputy chair of the parliamentary committee that oversees the watchdog.

Hours before her accident, Haines welcomed the appointment of a new NACC commissioner and deputy, and the "reset" of the integrity body.

A Leading Voice for Regional Australia

As a leading voice for regional Australia, Haines was fuelled by the catastrophic Black Summer fires of 2019-2020 in her advocacy for regional telecommunications reform.

"The summer sounds of cicada replaced by the ping-ping-ping of the VicEmergency app — it's like the heart monitor of a nation in the intensive care unit," she said in 2020.

Haines spearheaded the push for temporary disaster roaming, an emergency system activated this month that allows Australians to switch to another carrier's network if theirs fails during a severe disaster.

Tributes and Condolences

Centre Against Violence for the Ovens/Murray chief executive Jaime Chubb said Haines was incredibly fit and had run for their team in the Wangaratta marathon festival.

"She's incredibly fit, she has run for our team in the Wangaratta marathon festival," Chubb said. "When she first turned up we thought she would walk it, but she ran it."

Rural City of Wangaratta Mayor Irene Grant said Haines could win over even the most prickly of patients.

"My father had a surgery at the hospital when Helen was a nurse there, and her kindness, and the way she dealt with my dad, who was not an easy person to deal with, was fabulous, and that probably created my first impression of Helen and the sort of person she is," Grant said.

A Health Career Carried into Politics

Haines was lured to the north-east by her sweetheart, Phil Haines, an agricultural scientist at the Rutherglen Research Institute. At just 26, she became a matron at the Chiltern Bush Nursing Hospital before she and Phil moved to a farm on a billabong of the King River in Wangaratta.

She continued her nursing work and eventually undertook a master's degree in epidemiology and public health that involved further study in Sweden, where she completed a doctoral degree in medical science.

Her three-decade career in health — as a nurse, midwife and healthcare researcher — shaped her demands to address the existing regional health gap.

The expansion of the commonwealth "paid prac" program, to ensure students who undertake mandatory placements get paid, was the result of sustained pressure from Haines and independent senator David Pocock.

"If one woman doesn't feel safe in our parliament, then no woman [does]," she said.

Praying for Helen

The Haines family has issued a statement thanking those who helped yesterday, bystanders and health workers and the police for their response.

At the heart of Haines's life has always been her family. Now that family is rallying by her hospital bed, praying they will be getting cuddles from their smiling nanna soon.