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ESSENTIALS
– MP Helen Haines victim of ‘targeted’ attack
– Fallout from Matt Canavan’s EU free trade opposition
– Troy Bramston on Whitlam’s legacy, Albo’s lack of agenda
DRIVING THE DAY
MP HELEN HAINES CRITICALLY INJURED IN TARGETED ATTACK
Our thoughts are with independent MP Helen Haines, who suffered critical injuries after being attacked near her electorate office yesterday afternoon.
What we know so far: Independent MP for Indi Helen Haines was struck with a Toyota Land Cruiser in Wangaratta, Victoria, at 3:35 p.m. A 43-year-old male suspect from Tarrawingee, in Haines’ electorate, is in custody after he was restrained by bystanders.
Haines had arrived at her office to conduct a videolink interview with the ABC’s “Afternoon Briefing” program when she was attacked. Victoria Police said she would be airlifted to Melbourne for treatment.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the Australian Federal Police, Victoria Police and ASIO are working together, and the joint counterterrorism team “has been activated but the motive is not known.”
Why it’s shocking: While any attack of this nature would be shocking, whoever the victim, Haines is respected and loved across the Australian Parliament. This is a horrific event — for Haines, her family and what it means for the arrival of a rising trend of political violence, particularly against women, here in Australia. Globally, this has included the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox in the U.K. in 2016 and the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords in 2011.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said that in 2024-25, there were 951 reports of harassing and threatening behaviour against high officerholders, rising to 1,067 in 2025-26.
Despite those threats- political violence is rare — there has been no killing of a politician at the state level since 1994 and none at the federal level.
WHERE THE STORY GOES NEXT: After Haines’ welfare, always the paramount concern, here are the questions we think will be asked:
– Motivation: Albanese said that this early in the investigation it was impossible to say. Why was Haines targeted?
– Political discourse: Albanese referenced his earlier efforts to urge political participants to “turn the temperature down.” How can Australia turn back the tide so political violence does not become a norm?
– Social media: Albanese linked the worsening political discourse and threats of violence to social media, telling ABC 7:30: “It [Australia] has changed, there is no question social media is a part of that, so is the contest for clicks: that things have to be reduced down to all caps, without any nuance.” Will his opponents agree this helps make the case to regulate digital platforms?
– Resourcing: The Australian Federal Police has a big job protecting politicians, with many warning they feel the need to cut back on public appearances or be more cautious due to threats and harassment. How soon can the government respond to inevitable calls for more protection?
SHOCK, SADNESS AS SUPPORT FOR HAINES POURS IN
PM Anthony Albanese: “She’s someone of integrity, she’s someone who treats everyone with respect, and she’s someone who is a beacon of light for that community.”
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor: “This is a shocking day for our nation. No one should be targeted in this way. Australians will be angry and appalled by the attack on Helen. … Our nation cannot become a place where violent attacks are normalised.”
Speaker Milton Dick: “Helen brings so much grace, compassion and decency to our parliament.”
Nationals Leader Matt Canavan: “My heart goes out to Helen Haines and her family tonight upon the news of this shocking attack. Helen is a hardworking and considerate Member of Parliament.”
Greens Leader David Shoebridge: “Horrified to hear of the apparent attack on my friend and colleague Helen Haines. Helen is an extraordinary human being and brings people together like few others. In grief and solidarity wishing her a complete recovery.”
One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson: “I am horrified and saddened. … Violence against any elected representative, whoever they are and whatever they stand for, is never acceptable in Australia.”
Treasurer Jim Chalmers: “A wonderful and thoughtful person, much-admired and much-loved.”
Independent Sen. David Pocock: “Helen is the very best of us. All my love is with Helen, her family, her community and supporting her recovery.”
WHAT THE AFP SPENDS ON PROTECTING POLLIES
In August, the Australian Federal Police revealed that the amount it spends on protection of politicians and government buildings had risen from $345 million in 2009-10 to $523 million in 2024-25. The amount has stayed steady as a proportion of its budget at about 28 per cent.
In October 2025, the AFP announced it had set up a national security investigations team to combat threats to social cohesion, including to federal parliamentarians, due to concerns of politically motivated violence that falls short of the definition of terrorism.
The Australian Financial Review reported that between September 2025 and August 2026, that team had charged 38 people for offences relating to threats against parliamentarians or high office-holders including: 29 charged with using a carriage service to menace, 10 with using a carriage service to make a threat and three with threatening to cause harm to a commonwealth public official.
In response to that report, Australian Federal Police Association President Alex Caruana warned in August 2026 that “continued pressure to identify efficiencies while expanding the AFP’s workload also creates a risk that financial savings begin to affect operational capability. ... That creates risks for our members and could ultimately have serious consequences for the Australian community.”
LIB MODS BOOST FREE TRADE IN EU BUST UP WITH NATIONALS:
When shadow trade minister Matt Canavan wrote an opinion piece for The Australian on Friday declaring “the Liberals and Nationals oppose the EU free-trade,” the topic had come up at shadow cabinet, but there was no decision and therefore no position.
Canavan was frontrunning not just his party and the Coalition but also … himself, as it’s his job to shepherd the policy through.
The talking points distributed to MPs at the same time, seen by Playbook, said: “We’re opposed to the deal as it stands, subject to the proper parliamentary and Coalition processes.”
Those caveats strangely went missing as conservative Liberals raced to the telephone, email or News24 studio to declare on record they agreed with Canavan. On Monday, we got treated to a display of externalizing the internals, as POLITICO and other news outlets did more to facilitate the discussion than the Coalition itself. Moderates were left to decide whether to fight for free trade (in what seems set to be the minority view) or stay silent and let opponents monopolize the airwaves.
Former PM Malcolm Turnbull told POLITICO: “The Liberal Party should stick to its free trade principles and support an FTA, the negotiation of which was a Liberal government initiative.”
Former trade minister, and now Australian Banking Association Chief Executive Simon Birmingham told the ABC the deal would boost foreign investment and would not be easy to renegotiate.
There are four paths forward for the deal:
— Both the Coalition and Greens support Labor
— The Coalition ends up voting for the deal
— The Greens vote for the deal
— Labor has to assemble a coalition of the willing: They need 9 votes out of 19 on the crossbench (either some Coalition or Greens crossing the floor, or all 9 non-Greens crossbenchers, including four One Nation).
THE PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW
TROY BRAMSTROM — ‘THE GOVERNMENT LACKS A GROWTH AGENDA’
Bramston has spent years studying Gough Whitlam, interviewing more than 100 people for his biography of the former prime minister: “Gough Whitlam: The Vista of the New,” a finalist in the 2026 Australian Political Book of the Year Award.
In this conversation, Bramston reflects on Whitlam’s political gifts and governing failures, and reveals what Anthony Albanese took from reading the book in office. Read the full interview with Ryan Heath.
What did Whitlam teach you about power and how it’s exercized?
He was very much a singular political leader: kind of like a lone ranger. But that also became the reason, in many ways, for his downfall. He forgot some of the essential elements of what makes politics work, and that is cooperation and collegiality and compromise.
In the 1950s and the 1960s, the Labor Party was going out of business. No amount of policy development or team building would compensate for leadership. But he had this defining flaw: He had a difficulty in how he related to other people.
If we looked at Gough as a child or student today, would we ask: Is he on the spectrum?
A lot of politicians aren’t normal people. They’ve got the political gene. Paul Keating called it the crazy gene. Gough certainly had that, but he was very different to Bob Hawke. For Gough, it wasn’t about himself, it was about the policy agenda. I think for many people why he remains this compelling figure is because he did change Australia.
How did your view of him change over the course of the book?
When I was writing the book, the flaws in him, the mistakes that he made, really came to the fore in a very big way. To really succeed in politics you’ve got to know how to run your party. You’ve got to keep people united and focused. You’ve got to be able to run a cabinet properly. And on all of those things — the party, the cabinet, the public service — he almost ignored them all. They were things that got in his way for delivering his agenda.
Whitlam is this Shakespearean figure, both visionary and arrogant bulldozer. Does Albo look down on Whitlam for not being even keeled enough?
I think you’re right. Look, to be honest, Albanese launched the book. As he was reading it, he would often send me a text or ring me up and say: “I just can’t believe how Gough is handling this particular issue or this particular political event.”
He said it was the first biography of a prime minister that he had read while he was prime minister, and so he came to it in a very different way. He’s hugely inspired by the Whitlam policy agenda, but very critical of how he ran the government and how he ran the party.
Can Labor become a “natural party of government” as Albo wants, if it learns enough from Whitlam?
That was actually Bob Hawke’s great goal when he came into government in 1983.
He [Albanese] may achieve that not so much only because of what his government and what his party is doing, but because of the implosion on the other side of politics. What we’re seeing now is the complete destruction of the conservative to traditional conservative parties in Australia.
Where he’s probably falling down, I think, is certainly in the communication element. I think he needs to be a little bit more inspirational and a little bit more energetic.
We’re still only really tinkering at the edges.
I think the government does lack a growth agenda and an ambitious economic agenda.
BY THE NUMBERS
$2.83 billion: The value of Parliament House as at June 30, 2026 (per the Department of Parliamentary Services annual report.)
$22.6 million: What DPS earned in the 2025 to 2026 financial year from events, gift shop sales, catering and sublease income — up by $5.9 million on the preceding year.
CANBERRA MEETS WORLD
SENSITIVE GOVERNMENT AGENCIES TARGETS BY SPYWARE: “Australia’s nuclear science agency and other highly sensitive government and critical infrastructure organisations have been targeted by a sophisticated, foreign bad actor that secretly weaponized online advertising to track millions of devices and install spyware,” the ABC reported.
STATE OF THE NATION
AI SNOOPING AT WORK, DIGITAL DUTY, & ROBODECISIONS
The Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence is holding a hearing in Sydney, to be attended by the eSafety Commissioner, Human Technology Institute at UTS, ASIC and science agency CSIRO.
More power please: Expect the eSafety Commissioner to be asked about the proposed digital duty of care, which it noted in its submission will apply to AI and therefore expands the eSafety Commissioner’s remit as an AI regulator.
“We are already seeing the weaponisation of AI to create child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) material, deepfake image-based-abuse, as well as how AI can amplify technology-facilitated abuse, and how AI companions can expose children to age-inappropriate and harmful material,” it warned.
New law for AI snooping at work: The Human Technology Institute noted that Australians have very low trust in AI — only 30% believe the benefits of AI outweigh the risks, the lowest ranking globally. The institute noted a few urgent priorities including transparency over data used to train AI, a framework to govern automated decision making by government, and reforms to the Fair Work Act “to give employers clarity on how they can safely and reasonably monitor their works, and to protect those workers against harmful surveillance in the workplace.”
CSIRO’s submission is rosier, talking up AI’s “potential to strengthen Australia’s resilience and promote productivity and well-being.” The science agency undertook a six-month trial of M365 Copilot with mixed results, reporting “improved productivity and efficiency in structured tasks such as meeting summaries and email drafting, but gaps were identified in advanced functionalities and integration, which limited Copilot’s overall effectiveness.”
Don’t do a Deloitte: For more on AI doing less well at advanced functionality, a shoutout for a Friday news break by Maani Tru and Jesinta Burton at The Australian Financial Review about citation errors in a report Deloitte did for the West Australian government about a proposed university merger. This follows last year’s AI-induced shocker by Deloitte for the employment department, which prompted the consultancy to refund $98,000 of its fee.
MAGA-STYLE POLITICS HITS AUSTRALIA WITH A BANG: Complete with poll-topping parties mocking senators with prolapsed vaginas. Pauline Hanson has told Senate colleague Jacqui Lambie to “get over it.”
Andrew Hastie (“cheap, nasty and vulgar”), Tim Wilson (“despicable”), Monique Ryan (“One Jacqui Lambie is worth 1,000 Pauline Hansons”) were among the parliamentarians to condemn the cartoon, as Sarah Henderson worried Anika Wells could ban it. (Wells has not suggested that.)
“Decent leaders don’t stir up hatred,” Lambie told ABC Radio National.
Read Finn McHugh and Miriam Webber’s full story — including condemnation from the RSL.
WELFARE PENALTIES RESUME
The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations has confirmed that from Oct. 26 it will resume welfare penalties if a dole recipient doesn’t meet a “reconnection requirement” within four weeks or refuses to accept a suitable offer of employment.
The Targeted Compliance Framework was paused after the Commonwealth Ombudsman found it was not operating lawfully. Penalties for other failures are expected to resume in the first quarter of 2027.
Antipoverty Centre co-coordinator Jay Coonan said he was “extremely alarmed” by the announcement, and the government had refused to provide evidence that the program is operating lawfully.
MINNS IN BID TO SAVE HUNTER
Fresh from the announcement that 400 jobs at MACH Energy’s Mount Pleasant coal mine in the Hunter will be guaranteed to 2032 through legislation responding to the High Court’s decision to reject planning approval, the NSW Premier Chris Minns is back in the region under threat from One Nation on Tuesday. He will announce that a former mine site at Teralba is the preferred location for a manufacturing hub centered on building trains to replace the Tangara.
JIMMINY CRICKETS: Queensland Premier David Crisafulli‘s government is escalating its attacks on the Albanese government over its recent tax changes, just days after Treasurer David Janetzki declaring he would not “clean up Jim Chalmers’ mess.” Read his comments in The Australian here.
PARTY ROOM
GREENS — WILL STEELE-JOHN ATTEND ESTIMATES?
No one seems to know. The Greens senator insists he’s not on leave a week out from Senate estimates. Despite asking all media requests to be sent to him directly — not to his staff — Jordon Steele-John didn’t respond to Playbook.
Shifting language: After Steele-John’s explosive statement on Sunday night, claiming Shoebridge pressured him to take leave but he never agreed, the Greens leader was forced to clarify his wording. “It was the understanding of Sen. Shoebridge that leave was agreed.”
Different from: Shoebridge’s original statement, which said Steele-John had “requested” leave.
ONE NATION — PLAN TO CAP NEGATIVE GEARING: In the party’s language, they will “protect negative gearing for up to two investment properties,” and also “fight any plan” for death taxes and taxes on the family home.
Good line from the release: “Labor couldn’t run a corner shop. But they know how to send one broke.”
AROUND THE PLAYBOOKS
LONDON — ANDY BURNHAM, EAR HERO: British PM Burnham tasked ministers with unveiling a stream of “everyday fixes” to improve voters lives. The first “fix” will be a crackdown on loud music on public transport. Local authorities will get powers to slap bus passengers blasting loud music with £100 fines. Train companies have the power to fine up to £1,000.
AGENDA ASSISTANT
ESTIMATES SCHEDULES ARE OUT: Read them here.
COMMUNITY CORNER
JOIN POLITICO at a U.S. midterm elections debriefing, Nov. 5 with the United States Studies Centre in Sydney. Our executive editors and other experts will walk through what the election results mean for Americans and Australians. RSVP here.
FORMER LABOR A-G IS NEW NACC BOSS : Five months after Paul Brereton resigned as National-Anti Corruption commissioner, the government has announced it will appoint Robert McClelland in his place. McClelland is currently deputy chief justice of the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia, but was the attorney-general between 2007 to 2011 under the Rudd and Gillard governments. He entered Parliament as MP for Barton in 1996, alongside Anthony Albanese in the neighboring electorate of Grayndler.
The government announcement makes much of the fact McClelland was appointed and promoted as a judge by two Liberal AGs, George Brandis and Christian Porter. But there is a big difference between sitting on cases between divorcing parents and an anti-corruption commission, which has oversight over everything from robodebt to MPs’ proper use of their offices and parliamentary resources.
Christopher Savundra will also be put forward to replace Deputy Commissioner Nicole Rose, who resigned in May to move overseas. Savundra currently holds a senior role in the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.
The committee that oversees the NACC, which includes Haines and Greens Leader David Shoebridge, unanimously signed off on the appointments.
BIRTHDAYS
Courier Mail political reporter Ellen Ransley, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Aussie singer (and Kylie’s sister) Dannii Minogue.