Paul Williams: How much damage can a cream pancake do? It seems a lot

Something occurred in Australian politics last month that many would not have noticed, or at least brushed off as trivial had they heard, writes Paul Williams.

Something occurred in Australian politics last month that many would not have noticed, or at least brushed off as trivial had they heard.

Northern Territory Chief Minister Natasha Fyles was assaulted on a Sunday while greeting folks – as she regularly does – at a community market. A 56-year-old woman, later tracked down and charged with aggravated assault, allegedly slammed a cream pancake into Fyles’s face.

It reminds us of the silly actions of a teenage protester who cracked an egg on the head of former One Nation Senator Fraser Anning in 2019.

Some rate such assaults as trivial, even laughable. After all, how much damage can a cream cake do? A lot, it seems. Fyles was left with facial bruising and, while severely shaken, has pledged not to be dissuaded from informal meet-and-greets.

Chief Minister Natasha Fyles had a cream pancake allegedly smashed into her face.

Yet it was clearly, as others described it, a “violent assault”. But such incidents comprise an even graver attack on the body politic itself.

When members of the public threaten or actually harm their elected representatives – or, worse, their spouses and children – they tear at the already delicate threads connecting legislators to the people.

Voters already complain politicians “don’t listen” or are “out of touch” or “hard to meet”. Physical attacks on pollies can only ramp up security around them, making them even less connected to the people.

The alleged assault.

On hearing of Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews’s retirement from politics this week, locals in his Mulgrave electorate expressed admiration for the man but lamented how difficult it was to speak to him casually through an army of security personnel after anti-lockdown thugs threatened his family’s wellbeing.

Fortunately, political violence is rare in Australia. We occasionally see election day scuffles at polling booths, but they’re so rare such reports usually make the evening news. And, unlike recent events in the United States, virtually all Australians accept election outcomes as fair and accurate and allow for a peaceful transfer of power.

But it hasn’t always been so. Our first taste of major political violence came in Sydney in 1868 when Henry O’Farrell, an Irish republican, shot and wounded Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria’s second son.

While Alfred was not a politician as such, O’Farrell’s actions had a long-enduring impact as anti-Irish sentiment plagued the community for years.

The O’Farrell incident was recalled in 1994 when, again in Sydney, a 23-year old fired a starter’s pistol at a visiting Prince Charles.

In 1921, New South Wales Labor MP Percy Brookfield was shot and killed while trying to disarm a man in South Australia.

In 1928, another New South Wales pollie, the Nationalist (Liberal) state MP Hyman Goldstein, fell from a cliff to his death. While ruled an accident at the time, many later concluded Goldstein’s political enemy, federal Nationalist MP Thomas Ley, ordered the killing.

When Ley was found guilty of another murder in Britain in 1947, it was widely believed Ley also killed Australian federal Labor MP Frederick McDonald in 1926.

In 1994, another New South Wales MP, Labor’s John Newman, an anti-gang campaigner, was shot and killed by a Labor rival.

The incident brought to mind anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay (a federal Liberal Party candidate in regional New South Wales in 1974) who disappeared in 1977, probably at the hands of the local mafia.

Northern Territory Chief Minister Natasha Fyles.

But perhaps Australia’s most memorable moment of political violence was the attempted assassination of federal Labor leader Arthur Calwell in 1966.

Calwell had just left a boisterous anti-Vietnam War meeting and entered his car when a teenage Peter Kocan fired a sawn-off rifle at Calwell’s head. The cold night air had kept the car window up, and Calwell’s life was saved.

Yes, significant political violence has been rare in Australia, but there’s no reason to believe we will continue to be immune from the American disease where guns and a win-at-all-costs political culture has seen dozens of politicians, including four sitting presidents, murdered.

I’ve been observing politics closely for more than 40 years and I have never before seen the level of base party-political tribalism I see today.

While Australian politics have always been passionate, debates were largely respectful, and ideological and not personal, with points made on logic and facts and not emotion and faith. Even as a humble opinion writer, I receive more vile abuse today than ever.

Why? Because my opinion differs from others’.

Sadly, an increasingly misinformed, self-entitled and irrational electorate – abetted by social media and myopically self-selecting algorithms – has today normalised verbal political violence.

How long will it be before physical violence also becomes the norm in Australian politics?

Paul Williams is an Associate Professor at Griffith University

Originally published as Paul Williams: How much damage can a cream pancake do? It seems a lot