Anne Aly, 19 Death Threats, and a Withdrawal in the House

Small Business Minister Anne Aly says she got 19 death threats on social media in the past week alone.

She gave the figure in a video posted to Instagram on 13 October, after a remark aimed at her in the House of Representatives that morning. The Guardian

Before question time on Tuesday, Liberal National MP Angie Bell, who holds the Gold Coast seat of Moncrieff, said Aly and the prime minister should be "shamed and stoned in the square". She was attacking the Australian Tax Office decision to ban credit card payments for tax bills. Tony Burke, the Labor Leader of the House who manages government business in the chamber, objected to "physically violent imagery". The Speaker ordered Bell to withdraw the remark. That deals with it in seconds on the official record.

Aly, a Labor MP and frontbencher, called the remark racist and misogynistic. She said past threats against her had used "stone her" language. She did not claim Bell meant it as a literal threat. She said the words carry extra weight for her because of those threats. The phrasing was familiar. The volume was not. Nineteen in a week.

The Australian Federal Police received 951 referrals or threats about parliamentarians in the 2024-25 financial year. More than 50 police reports about alleged criminal offences were made during the last federal election campaign.

The broader context here is one Canberra watchers know well. A withdrawal fixes the Hansard, the official written record, in seconds. It does not fix what happens next. Aly's point was that chamber language travels fast to inboxes and comment threads where staff and police end up reading it. MPs can say sorry and move to the next vote. Women ministers, and particularly women of colour, often cannot. Anyone who has sat through a security briefing for a frontbencher should get that difference.

In my view, the test for the major parties is practical rather than rhetorical. The Coalition does not need a new policy on threats. It needs discipline on violent metaphor in the chamber, especially before question time when clips are cut for socials. Labor does not need another statement about respect. It needs to show what it expects when its own ministers are targeted, beyond a point of order from the Leader of the House. For the crossbench and staff, the question will be whether the Speaker's intervention resets the language, or just moves it off the Hansard and online.