Police said they believe a 43-year-man driving a white Toyota Landcruiser struck Ms Haines outside her office on Murphy Street about 3.35pm.

"When he exited the Toyota the driver, a 43-year-old Tarrawingee man, was arrested at the scene by a passerby," Victoria Police said.

"The woman was taken to hospital with critical injuries."

Police said a knife was located by officers and seized from inside the Toyota.

Are you fucking serious? So angry at a politician that you try to kill her? She isn't even a member of a political party - so you can't pin it on overall anger at Labor/Libs for something or other.

bloody cookers. And fuck PHON and the media for egging this shit on.

According to the live broadcast I've just seen (3:00pm), she's already lost one leg, they've yet to determine if the other will have to be amputated too.

Arrested man was anti-logging campaigner, environment group tells ABC:

Brendan Nugent, who has been arrested by police over the attack on Helen Haines, was an anti-logging campaigner who had previously been involved with the Save our Strathbogie Forest group:

Chairperson Bertram Lobert told the ABC Nugent was an active member for about two years before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, but he hadn't heard from him since then.

He said Nugent would drive an hour from his Tarrawingee home to get to the group's meetings.

"At the time he was an intensely intelligent man interested in the issues our group was interested in," Lobert said.

"He was a person who cared about the environment. He got on generally well with people."

He said he was in shock to learn Mr Nugent had been arrested over the attack on Ms Haines.

"The whole thing is so sad … we have members of our group who are friends with Helen," he said.

"So it's real, it's immediate. It's going to hurt."

About an hour ago ABC reported that Ms Haines was undergoing emergency surgery in Melbourne after suffering severe injuries to her lower body...

It is understood the 43-year-old driver, who was arrested at the scene, is known to police and will undergo a mental health assessment. Counter-terror investigators will also examine his history as they search for the motivation behind the attack.

Burke provides more details on what unfolded outside Haines's office

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has provided some more detail on what happened outside Helen Haines's office yesterday afternoon.

Burke says witnesses in Wangaratta saw the driver of the Toyota LandCruiser do a U-turn and ram Haines against her vehicle.

He says the driver reversed and hit the Indi MP a second time, before a bystander ran towards the car and remove the driver from the car.

Sounds like it's quite undercharged: dangerous driving and causing serious injury (charges usually laid for a reckless accident not an intentional act), and causing harm to a Commonwealth public official (which could be laid for relatively minor injuries).

Either they know something we don't, or they're going soft on him for some reason. Why not attempted murder for example, if the intent was there? Perhaps he convinced them somehow he genuinely didn't want to kill and only intended for her injuries to be minor, perhaps her political leanings were not to the police's satisfaction to go hard on the charges (or maybe there is more coming). Maybe it's a deal to plead guilty to those charges rather than fight more serious ones on the grounds of insanity.