It’s been a week of shock and grief.

The attack on independent MP Helen Haines has left her family and the community she represents confronting a trauma that has reverberated across the country and whose consequences will endure long after the headlines have moved on.

In Canberra, there have been calls for restraint, for care with words and for an end to the cruelty that has become so familiar in our public life. Those calls ask politicians and the media to recognise the weight of our words and our collective responsibility for the tone we accept in public debate.

Today, ABC Melbourne’s Raf Epstein on a devastating week, the habits we’ve come to accept, and whether this moment will change anything once the political contest resumes.

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