As terror attacks in Britain and closer to home have dominated our thoughts in recent weeks, the Australian political poll numbers have tightened significantly. The burning question: is this correlation or causation?

The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, certainly isn’t dying wondering and is charging to the fringes on citizenship in a bid to find a way of accusing Labor of being “soft” on national security.

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The prime minister has got in on the act with all his confected gusto too, calling on immigrants to become “Australian patriots”, invoking some sort of Antipodean star-spangled banner as if wanting to build a life here was no longer enough.

The numbers in this week’s Essential report do give rise to a credible argument that the Coalition is benefiting from the renewed focus on national security.

While the movements in the primary votes are at the margin, the two-party preferred equation has moved two points from 46-54 to 48-52 since the Manchester attack in late May. The main driver of this surge has been a three-point increase in One Nation support and a slight drop in Labor numbers. Nothing conclusive there, but enough to ask some further questions around the national security thematic.

When asked whether the threat of terrorism happening in Australia has increased in recent times, more than three-quarters of voters agree.

Two figures stand out in this table – the high number of Coalition voters who see an increased threat and the even higher number of “other voters”, the cluster of One Nation, Xenophon and independents, where nearly half believe the threat has increased a lot. This points to fertile ground for the Coalition to play to its lowly base on an issue that even progressive voters concede is a concern to them.

And in a time of rising fear about terrorism, the public tilts in favour of tighter restrictions on the freedoms of some people they fear.

The stark gap between Green and other voters – along with the position of Labor voters – suggests a potent political wedge for the government to exploit. This is why the Coalition’s frantic tightening of Australian citizenship, specifically designed to send the public a message it is cracking down on Muslims, has been elevated with such fanfare.



In normal times, a proposition to give a minister the power to override the decision of a court would be seen as an attack on the separation of powers, but Labor is being taunted to block the legislation in the Senate as proof it lacks the fortitude to address terror.

And if Labor does swallow its concerns and wave this legislation through, rest assured that Peter Dutton, the right’s wannabe Tony Abbott de jour, will cook up something even more extreme for them to block.

Because this is all about creating a political contest on national security, as a means of shifting the political debate into a field where the Coalition has a natural advantage.

But there is one more table that suggests there could be a way for progressives to neutralise this attack.

Along with tighter powers, the public also wants the government to be spending more on anti-terrorism measures. But in a time of budget constraint, this is easier said than done.

A glance at the recent budget papers shows that while the government has increased its Asio headcount, it has reduced the number of staff in the Department of Immigration and Border Protection by 245. The department has indicated at least a further 650 will go in the next three years – representing a cut to the workforce of more than 5%.

That’s one in 20 workers charged with monitoring borders, checking the status of visa holders and generally maintaining the integrity of the flow of foreigners into the nation – gone.

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Think about that; the self-same minister who wants to increase his power is running down the department that is charged with enforcing his own increasingly draconian policies.

Most informed observers expected the Manchester and London terror attacks to stem the bleed of Conservative votes in the final days of the British election campaign. Instead the UK Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, pointed to the cuts in police numbers under Theresa May as part of her government’s austerity agenda.

In its determination to shrink Australia’s public service, the Turnbull government runs a similar risk of transforming what should be a gift into yet another political time bomb.