More than 80 per cent of Labor voters and nearly 90 per cent of Greens voters opted for Mr Turnbull on national security. Three-quarters of people "feel safer" with Prime Minister Turnbull as leader rather than Tony Abbott, a Seven-ReachTel poll found. Credit:Andrew Meares The Seven-ReachTel poll of 3144 people, conducted on Thursday night, found 76 per cent of women feel safer with Mr Turnbull having the final say on the deployment of force rather than his predecessor. A little over seven in 10 men also preferred Mr Turnbull, who this week rebuffed calls from within his government to deploy Special Forces troops to strife-torn Syria and Iraq to take on the terrorist Islamic State, also known as ISIL and ISIS. Before flying out for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Malta and the United Nations climate summit in Paris, Mr Turnbull dismissed suggestions Mr Abbott is at the centre of an "insurgency" against his leadership.

Talk of a subterranean resistance made up of disaffected conservatives flared recently after Mr Abbott and some of his backers called for "boots on the ground" in the fights against IS, a position in direct conflict with Mr Turnbull's belief that a strengthened air campaign is the best way forward. On Tuesday, Mr Turnbull used his first national security statement to Parliament to advocate a "calm, clinical, professional, effective" response to the terror threat post-Paris massacre. His insistence that "gestures and machismo" would be counterproductive was widely reported as a direct "slapdown" of Mr Abbott's more gung-ho approach to national security. Treasurer Scott Morrison's warning against any "hot-headed" Australian response to the Paris atrocity was also interpreted as a rebuke to Mr Abbott and his former defence minister Kevin Andrews, who argued publicly that air strikes will not be enough to wipe out IS. Mr Abbott made headlines around the world and rocked diplomatic relations with Russia when he vowed to "shirt-front" President Vladimir Putin in response to the downing of Malaysia Airways flight MH17 in the Ukraine in July last year.

In February this year, John Lyons, a senior writer at The Australian, revealed Mr Abbott had suggested a unilateral invasion of Iraq, with 3500 Australian ground troops that could halt the advance of IS. The paper reported Mr Abbott had raised the idea with top military planners. Follow us on Twitter