"The lives of my children were threatened quite openly some years ago."
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It was prompted by a question about Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner, who was forced to rush his family from their home after anti-lockdown extremists published the address online.
And this week Australians were shocked by images of crowds of anti-lockdown protestors on the steps of the Victorian parliament gathered around a hangman's gallows chanting "Freedom", "Traitor", "Kill Dan Andrews" and "Hang Dan Andrews" while attempting to place the head of an inflatable doll of the Premier through a noose.
The pandemic has increased the temperature in a world where self-radicalised loners and conspiracy theorists are already finding each other, before bursting into sudden violence.
Labor MP and counter-terror expert Anne Aly says COVID-19 has mainstreamed conspiracy movements, and is urging colleagues to undergo a "stocktaking" of their security.
"I think every single one of us could be at risk, as public figures. You don't even need to be outspoken to attract someone's ire," she tells The Canberra Times.
'Are you kidding?'
In August 2019, a man was arrested after brandishing a large knife at Aly's office in Perth. She says the incident left her and her staff shaken, and prompted the office to be fitted with an alarm system and CCTV.
Before entering Parliament, Aly earned a PhD, lectured on counter-terrorism, and has developed profiles of violent attackers. She uses that skillset to assess the credibility of each threat she receives, before deciding whether to pass it on to police.
Aly says would-be terrorists usually share two traits: they're fixated, and their views leak onto their social media.
"You can't always be 100 per cent sure whether someone is going to act, but there are certain markers and indicators," she says.
"Whenever there's a terrorist attack, there's always shock [and] horror that their Facebook page or the social media was filled with all this stuff.
"That's basically what I do: look at their social media footprint, look at their associations, look at the language in the threat, look at whether or not there's any kind of sustained threat."
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Her home has an alarm system, and her husband often accompanies her to public events to act "as a kind of personal bodyguard".
Aly, Australia's first female Muslim MP, says the 2019 incident was not the first time she was forced to think carefully about her security.
It wasn't even the first time she faced threats in the workplace. While an academic, she moved office multiple times after her location was leaked.
Aly also required six bodyguards during a trip to Pakistan in which she spoke against blasphemy laws. But she says other MPs take a more laissez-faire approach.
"I'm used to having [protection]. I guess for the people who aren't used to having that, who aren't conscious of having to be aware of their surroundings, it's a big difference to how they behave," she says.
"I speak to other colleagues of mine who have none of that stuff, and I'm like: are you kidding? Why don't you?"
'Just the beginning'
Amess's murder came just five years after pro-EU Labour MP Jo Cox was stabbed and shot in broad daylight by a bedsit Nazi, whose internet records showed him narrowing in on his target just days from the attack.
The killings, predictable yet random, prompted a wave of introspection. Should MPs change the way they engage with the public?
Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews discussed politicians' security with Australian Federal Police commissioner Reece Kershaw, when Coalition MPs voiced their own fears in the wake of Amess' killing.
The AFP says there has been no uptick in threats reported by MPs since Amess' murder but, for security reasons, does not go into detail on protection arrangements.
Aly says the biggest threat she faces comes from outside the people she meets on a day-to-day basis.
"You do have to find that balance, for sure. But I don't think that balance inhibits you from doing the important task of connecting with people," she says.
"Having security upgrades to my office doesn't mean I don't have meetings in my office. It just means that we have meetings in a particular room."
Cox's murder came in the final throws of an incendiary Brexit campaign, and Aly is concerned about the temperature surrounding COVID-19.
Conspiracy theories have always underpinned violent extremism, and anti-lockdown protests are "another addition to the cachet of anti-authoritarian grievances", she warns.
"What we're seeing now is a shift to it being more around ... a [belief] that there's some kind of conspiracy to suppress people's freedom," she says.
"We're only just seeing the beginning of that. I think COVID brought that out."
'Any mad idea'
ASIO boss Mike Burgess has warned the pandemic has allowed extremists to spend "more time in the echo chamber of the internet on the pathway to radicalisation". They are also increasingly fixated on single issues like lockdowns, he said.
The internet allows a conspiracy theorist, once marginalised in the real world, to discover and gravitate towards like-minded people without ever having to leave his bedroom.
Although Cox and Amess' killers followed forms of extremism which have concerned intelligence for decades - neo-Nazism and Islamism - Charles Sturt University terror expert Professor Nick O'Brien agrees deadly fringe ideologies are emerging online.
The involuntary celibate - or "incel" - movement, already responsible for deadly attacks in the US, Canada, and the UK, is a case in point.
"Now, any mad idea that anybody has, there'll be someone out there that has similar ideas, and you have a community of people that will support it," O'Brien says.
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An Australian terrorist who murdered 51 Muslims in Christchurch in 2019 took inspiration from a far-right Norwegian extremist who killed 77 eight years earlier. Both had engaged with other extremists online.
A 2016 Islamic State call for atrocities in followers' countries of birth also prompted a wave of 'lone wolf' attacks.
"They do get support and encouragement from what others put out there on the internet, and they'll often be part of some group or other," O'Brien says.
'No hook'
Airey Neave's car suddenly exploded as it hit the ramp leading out of Westminster Palace.
A sophisticated bomb, smuggled under the home of British democracy by Irish republicans, was designed to detonate as the vehicle shifted its axis.
The 1979 assassination of Neave, an MP advocating a hardline stance in Northern Ireland, required detailed planning, significant risk of detection and, according to some law enforcement, inside help.
"Going back to those days ... people communicated with each other because they were working in groups," O'Brien says.
"As soon as you start to communicate with each other, you've immediately got a vulnerability because you're using telephones or other kinds of communications that can be intercepted."
But O'Brien, who has worked with the UK government on counter-terrorism, warns the new breed of attacker can self-radicalise and prepare while leaving virtually no footprint. Without them using overtly violent language online, they are near-impossible to detect.
"[Now] there's no hook for authorities to catch you. If you're sensible, you're using VPNs, you might be using the dark web," he says.
Law enforcement is also hampered by the sheer volume of extremist content on the internet, with those planning an attack not always distinguishable from the pack.
'Everyone's got a car'
O'Brien says while bomb-making manuals are available online, they often produce unstable devices. A would-be attacker also runs the risk of detection as they compile the necessary supplies.
That explains a preference for "everyday" items, which are easy to access and arouse no suspicion when bought.
"Everyone's got a car, and everyone's got a knife in their kitchen," he says.
"If they are radicalized enough to kill someone, they don't need to resort to any complicated method of doing it."
Aly insists her intervention is not meant to "strike fear into the hearts of politicians", but a call to take the threat seriously.
"It's about ensuring that you take responsibility, and that you do understand what's within your capabilities to try and keep yourself and your family safe," she says.
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