An anti-Israel activist has been charged after allegedly driving a four-wheel-drive vehicle into Australian federal MP Helen Haines, an attack that reportedly resulted in the loss of one of her legs.

Eco-activist Brendan Nugent is accused of striking the centrist independent politician as she retrieved belongings from the boot of her car outside her electorate office in Wangaratta, Victoria, on Monday.

Ms Haines, 65, remains in hospital in a critical condition after suffering devastating lower-body injuries in the incident on Murphy Street.

Nugent has been charged with intentionally causing serious injury and causing harm to a federal official. He is due to appear in court on Wednesday.

Police allege that Nugent, who lives in nearby Tarrawingee, repeatedly drove a white Toyota Land Cruiser into Ms Haines, a mother of three and grandmother.

Reports say surgeons were forced to amputate one of her legs, while doctors remain concerned about the condition of her other leg because of the extent of her injuries.

The alleged attack, which occurred at about 3.30pm local time on Monday, has intensified concerns about political violence in Australia. Politicians across the political spectrum have condemned what they described as an apparent deliberate assault.

Local reports indicate that Nugent’s parents have been friends with Ms Haines, the federal member for Indi in Victoria, for more than two decades.

Nugent’s family has issued a statement saying it will assist police with their investigation into the attack on Ms Haines.

The suspect’s father, Rod Nugent, and Rod’s partner, Christine Cunningham, said Ms Haines had been a close friend for more than 20 years.

“What happened to her yesterday is devastating and unfathomable,” they said.

“We would like to sincerely thank members of the local community and police who came to Helen’s aid yesterday after the shocking and horrific crime. We will be assisting Victoria Police in any way we can.”

“Helen Haines is a deeply respected, valued and much-loved member of our local community.”

A photograph shared on Ms Haines’ social media showed her smiling with Nugent’s stepmother in April 2025.

Nugent was reportedly detained behind the wheel of the Land Cruiser by local barber Ricky Jefferies. Jefferies said the driver was carrying a knife before police arrived and took him into custody.

Nugent is scheduled to face court on Wednesday and could seek bail.

The alleged assault has deeply unsettled Australians, as political violence is uncommon in the country and elected representatives have traditionally maintained close contact with the public.

Most lawmakers are not accompanied by security officers as they go about their work and personal lives.

Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese said he phoned local barber Ricky Jefferies, who had run from his store to help detain the suspect, to thank him for intervening.

Mr Albanese said: ‘It’s a reminder that at the worst of times, we see the best of the Australian character.’

The PM praised Mr Jefferies, describing him as a hero whose intervention may have prevented further injuries.

Mr Albanese said: ‘It’s got to be said here that at this dark and terrible time, an element of light is the fact that a Good Samaritan, someone rushed to Helen’s defence in Wangaratta… and that person is a hero today.

‘He deserves enormous praise and thanks for his intervention, which could have prevented even more further infliction of damage, which was aimed at Helen.’

Mr Jefferies told reporters: ‘It was crazy. A lot of people got involved immediately and they didn’t even check for danger. They just ran to help.’

Ms Haines is widely known in Canberra and nationally as a strong voice for integrity and honesty in politics.

She played a key role in establishing the National Anti-Corruption Commission and has been a prominent advocate for rural issues, especially healthcare.

Ms Haines’s family released a statement, asking Australians to think of her.

They said: ‘We thank the swift assistance of bystanders and the dedicated health workers who assisted her, and police for their response.

‘Our family, and Helen’s staff, will be making no further comment at this time, and ask that their privacy be respected by the public and media. Please keep Helen in your thoughts.’ 

They also said they were grateful for the ‘swift assistance of bystanders’ as well as medics and police.

The MP, who was first elected to Parliament in 2019 and has since been re-elected twice, was initially taken to a hospital in Wangaratta, a city of 30,000 people. 

She was airlifted later to a hospital in the state capital, Melbourne, 236km (147 miles) from the scene.

The Alfred Hospital didn’t respond Tuesday to a request for comment on media reports that Haines had had a leg amputated.

The injured lawmaker was not considered controversial or polarising. Ms Haines, the daughter of dairy farmers and mother of three was a nurse, midwife and academic before entering politics, and advocated for rural health matters. 

Mr Albanese said witnesses had reported that the suspect passed Haines in his SUV as she stood by the boot of her parked car. 

The SUV then turned and came back before the driver allegedly drove into the politician, the prime minister said.

Home affairs minister Tony Burke told ABC that after initially hitting her, the driver allegedly reversed and struck Haines a second time, pinning her against her car.

Cody Lepoidevin, one of the bystanders who came to Haines’s assistance, told reporters he thought he was witnessing a hit-and-run when the SUV backed away after she was struck the first time.

But instead of fleeing the scene, Mr Lepoidevin said the driver ‘then reversed and drove back into her’.

The head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation spy agency, Mike Burgess, on Tuesday reiterated an earlier warning that politically-motivated violence was a top security concern, along with espionage and foreign interference.

Police reported in 2025 that threats against parliamentarians had doubled over the past three years. 

Official data showed more than 1,000 such threats against politicians in the 2025-2026 fiscal year.

Mr Albanese, along with lawmakers from across the political spectrum, spoke to media outlets urging their colleagues, reporters and the public to turn down the heat in increasingly fractious political debates. 

Many also said they hoped Australia’s easygoing culture of approachable politicians wouldn’t change. 

A food bank volunteer who met the Duke and Duchess of Sussex during their visit has become an unexpected social media sensation thanks to her direct, no-nonsense manner.

The Sussexes visited Nottingham food poverty action group Himmah as part of their quasi-royal tour of the city. During the stop, Prince Harry and Meghan were also reunited with the women known as the “Grenfell ladies” in an emotional meeting.

For one volunteer, however, the visit appeared to be business as usual. She seemed impatient with the stream of questions as she showed Meghan, 45, how to prepare a bag of donated food.

In footage shared on X, the volunteer began by telling Meghan that the task was “not very difficult”. She then held up a bag for the duchess to fill while standing beside a crate packed with baked beans.

When Meghan appeared unsure and asked if she should move to “another station”, the volunteer shook her head. She then firmly instructed the duchess to take the bag and follow her.

Some royal watchers criticised what they described as Meghan’s “performative” questions, given the simplicity of the task. One person wrote on X: “It’s wild how she doesn’t understand how an operation of that kind works.”

During their visit to Himmah, Harry and Meghan were reunited with four women who had cooked for families grieving after the Grenfell Tower fire.

The couple kissed, hugged and held hands with the “Grenfell ladies”, who helped provide meals to families affected by the 2017 disaster, in which 72 people died.

The visit came after the Daily Mail reported that Harry and Meghan were accompanied on their Nottingham walkabout by a former Kensington Palace aide who once worked as a soap opera actor.

As the couple greeted members of the public, Beth Herlihy followed discreetly behind them, helping to carry flowers and balloons presented by supporters.

The Sussexes’ programme coordinator is co-founder of the PR firm Herlihy Loughran. She previously worked for the Royal Family before becoming one of Harry and Meghan’s most trusted aides.

On Thursday, Ms Herlihy travelled to Nottingham with the couple after helping organise their engagements in the city. She walked several paces behind them as they greeted a crowd of around 100 people.

Video footage also showed her positioning schoolchildren shortly before Harry and Meghan arrived to cheers from the crowd.

Before moving into royal circles, Ms Herlihy pursued a very different career as a soap actress, including playing a stripper in a Hollyoaks spin-off.

Using the stage name Bethan Coundley, she played Honey in two episodes of Channel 4’s Hollyoaks Later in 2011.

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In the storyline, her character slept with a man before drugging him and making him hallucinate that he had killed her with an axe.

The deception was exposed when a supposed burial site was found to contain the body of a pig rather than a human corpse.

Ms Herlihy also appeared in several racy photoshoots, including one in 2012 in which she wore a PVC catsuit.

Off screen, however, she forged a career in PR and, just a few years later, was working at Kensington Palace. She now works with Harry and Meghan after setting up an advisory firm for high-profile figures in the philanthropic sector.

Ms Herlihy founded the business with another former royal aide, Clara Loughran, who worked as Harry’s former programme manager and is married to Harry’s ex-assistant communications secretary, Nick Loughran.

She was made a Member of the Royal Victorian Order – an honour given to those who have served the monarchy with dedication in a personal capacity – by the Queen, on Harry’s recommendation.

The organisation describes itself as ‘a small, high-trust advisory working with high-profile individuals, founders and organisations to build and deliver meaningful philanthropic work’.

Its ‘bespoke’ services include ‘advice, positioning and delivery’ to ‘help good people do meaningful things, exceptionally well’ – and retaining the firm doesn’t come cheap.

According to a tax return filed by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s charity, Archewell Philanthropies, Harry and Meghan paid Herlihy Loughran £116,000 ($155,000) for its strategic advisory services in 2023. In 2022, Herlihy Loughran was paid £95,600 ($127,807).

The six-figure sum perhaps takes into account Ms Herlihy and Ms Loughran’s time working for the Firm, as the Daily Mail’s Royal Editor Rebecca English wrote that: ‘Both have been trained in the “royal way”.

‘Even the walkabout undertaken by the couple – just hours after their own team pointedly insisted they wouldn’t do one because they didn’t have the security to manage it, despite the exact timings of their visit being publicly released, presumably in an effort to drum up interest – was royal in all but name.’

In 2016, Ms Herlihy was hired as an events manager at the Royal Foundation, the joint charitable vehicle for the now-Prince and Princess of Wales and the Sussexes.

After the Sussexes split from the foundation in 2019, Ms Herlihy remained with Harry and Meghan, but was laid off by Kensington Palace after the Sussexes stepped down as senior royals and relocated to the US.

She set up Herlihy Loughran in 2020 and has followed the Sussexes across the pond.

In September 2023, she was spotted chatting with Prince Harry in the stands at a wheelchair basketball match between the UK and Ukraine at the Invictus Games in Dusseldorf. 

Dressed in black trousers, a beige sweater and suede boots, Ms Herlihy stayed close at hand as Harry and Meghan carried out a series of visits in Nottingham – nine years after their first royal visit as an engaged couple.