Nine electorate offices have been marked for security upgrades following last week’s attack on independent MP Helen Haines.
A top-ranking Department of Finance official revealed the upgrades during a Senate estimates hearing on Monday night, saying the department actions requests “as quickly as possible”.
Fronting media on Tuesday morning, Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said MP safety was “a matter of daily review”.
“People have raised concerns around EOs (electorate offices) and safety of their electorate offices,” she told ABC’s Radio National.
“It’s very legitimate that we have a look at that and respond.”
The revelations come after Communications Minister Anika Wells temporarily shut her electorate office because a woman allegedly made threatening gestures towards staff.
She is one of several MPs to share threats made to themselves, their families and their staff since the attack on Dr Haines, with Nationals MP David Littleproud revealing his wife and children had been targeted while he was abroad.
During her interview, Senator Gallagher spoke about an artificial intelligence tool that some parliamentarians use to sort through comments on their social media posts, separating genuine criticisms from violent threats.
Senator Gallagher said the sheer volume of threats was pressuring politicians.
“I think we’ve always put up with some pretty robust feedback in politics, certainly in my time in politics,” she said.
“But the volume, the scale, and the forcefulness of the threats and the violence and the abusive language is something that I haven’t seen.”
She said there were “discussions about what happens with … the more violent threats, the death threats, the threats of rape and harm to children”, including a way to directly flag them with the Australian Federal Police.
AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett said at the weekend the threat facing parliamentarians had changed over her 25 years in law enforcement.
Working in protective security early on in the early 2000s, she said threats made towards politicians usually came in the form of handwritten letters that were mailed through to offices.
“These days you can sit behind a keyboard and bash out a threat or abuse very quickly,” she said.
Ms Barrett said she started her mornings by reading a report detailing threats made towards parliamentarians over the previous 24 hours.
“Some days that report is pages and pages long,” she told ABC’s Insiders.
“And I feel really strongly, it’s important for me to say, we are not here to police free speech. We are not here to intervene in political discourse.
“But I would challenge any Australian to read some of these threats and some of the abuse that is reported to us from federal parliamentarians and for anyone to argue that is free speech or political discourse.”