Police and politicians sought to justify local raids and arrests two weeks ago by talking of imminent danger of terrorist acts. But few were charged and then only with conspiracy, a notoriously murky area of the law. The scenes for these raids were spectacularly ordinary suburban streets. Stage-managed for the media, the actions served to heighten popular anxieties. Neighbours were interviewed – this is just a quiet street, an ordinary area, I can't believe something like this would happen here – and the ideological convergence of the global and local was achieved: nobody is safe; terrorists can easily hide behind a veneer of suburban respectability; the landscape of the Australian dream can contain the seeds of a nightmare.

The wider function of the whole operation was to legitimise both the decision to send troops back to Iraq and to sell the counter- terrorist laws by which ASIO will be allowed to break in to your personal computer and meddle with its contents even if you haven't been involved in criminal acts. The intense circumstances of a moral panic are required to overcome the political misgivings about such attacks on freedom. So the press conference, in the wake of the police raids, assembled the full misere: Prime Minister, NSW Premier and heads of both NSW and Federal Police, each singing from the same portentous songbook: extraordinary attacks were planned and extraordinary measures were required.

Despite subsequent attempts at multicultural reassurance – politicians calling on the public to respect the rights of Australians from Middle Eastern backgrounds – the dog whistle has well and truly been sounded. The knee-jerk Islamophobes, like Cory Bernardi and Jackie Lambie – gave voice to their prejudices. Pictures appeared in social media of racist slogans spray painted on the property of Muslim Australians, and there were reports of strangers pulling headscarfs from women's heads in public places. When a man walked into an Islamic school wielding a knife no news outlet reported this as a potential act of terror. It is worth remembering that the most shocking massacre of recent times in the west was committed by an Islamophobe, Anders Breivik in Norway, who considered himself to be a soldier in a global war.

For those inclined towards conspiracy theorists, it is hard not to see parts of this current process as being carefully stage managed with the next election in mind. With public support for the government haemorrhaging in all directions, an unpopular budget and a bumbling front bench, Abbott recognises that his electoral prospects are best served by stoking patriotic anxiety. He will be mindful of the way John Howard used the politics of border control and specifically the Tampa/children overboard incident, to achieve an unlikely Federal Election victory in 2001. However, he is playing for much higher stakes. It is some time before the next poll is due and it remains to be seen whether events will justify the warnings of imminent danger.

George Morgan is senior lecturer in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at the University of Western Sydney.