Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern addresses reports in Australian media that NZ's offer has created a surge of people smuggling boats heading for our shores.

OPINION: What is Australia playing at?

Last year, when a raft of intelligence leaks across the ditch revealed the darker side of some asylum seekers detained in offshore processing centres, the motivation behind them was pretty plain to see.

They seemed pointedly aimed at undermining Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's amped-up stance on offering to take up to 150 refugees off Australia's hands.

DOMINION-POST Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has told media that boats bound for New Zealand have been turned around by Australian authorities.

Hers was the continuation of an offer first extended by Sir John Key, but it came with an extra dose of criticism and moral posturing over Australia's treatment of would-be refugees seeking to arrive by boat.

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And it riled the Aussies up like nobody's business. How dare this newcomer (who, while in Opposition, had already butted heads with the Australian Foreign Minister), preach on a problem New Zealand has no practical knowledge of.

HARRISON CHRISTIAN/STUFF Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern met Australian Labor leader Bill Shorten in December last year. His party is in pole position as Australia heads into an election year. Are there plans to attempt to tar him with Ardern's criticisms over Australia's handling of asylum seekers?

Australia spent $4 billion in 2017 protecting its own borders from people smugglers duping asylum seekers to make the treacherous journey by boat to either New Zealand or Australia.

New Zealand has never had a boat arrival - we're too far away. The Australian Government also argues it's due to its own "Operation Sovereign Borders", which turns boats around before they even get close to New Zealand.

There's bound to be some truth in that, though it's a hard thing to measure. As are claims that Ardern's criticisms of Australian policy are directly responsible for four more boats arriving in Australian waters just prior to Christmas.

GETTY IMAGES Is Australia's beef really with Ardern's stance on asylum seekers this time round? Well yes, probably, but there may also be some domestic political gains in undermining her stance through a series of intelligence leaks on asylum seekers.

There's logic to it - but intelligence "chatter" from people-smuggling crime syndicates in the culprit countries have, for a long time, often referred to New Zealand as a potential destination, and changes of Government in general are bound to increase such covert conversations.

It's hard to prove beyond all doubt, and therefore hard to claim as such. Ardern herself, had a strong set of comments on the issue: such conversations amongst smugglers were not new.

"Chatter amongst people smugglers has ebbed and flowed for many, many years. Keeping in mind of course that Tampa was over 15 years ago," she said.

But the timing of Tuesday's leak to a couple of Australian publications doesn't quite marry up.

Ardern's rhetoric has subsided over the past few months; there hasn't really been an issue for the Australians to fire up at. Except the issue of boat people has long been a stick over which to beat Opposition parties with.

Labor in Australia is in Opposition, and polls have been showing the party consistently more popular than the Government.

Sources on this side of the ditch have wondered aloud whether an attempt to frame Ardern's stance as one of a left-wing leader can then be transferred onto her Australian counterpart Bill Shorten.

The issue of asylums seekers is a lightning rod for voters in that country, and any perception of a softer stance would undoubtedly be punished at the polling booth, with Australia preparing for a federal election sometime between August and next May.

While Ardern's stance has not been welcomed by Australia (and it's not necessarily difficult to see why), this week's intelligence leaks seem a little more subversive.

This time it's not really about us at all, is it?