By Mark Kenny

A version of this article was originally published by The Canberra Times.

It is chilling to think that Australia's threat level has been lifted to "probable", not in response to external intelligence on ISIS or Jemaah Islamiyah, nor even foreign-aligned bad actors here, but because of a undefined home-grown danger.

We are turning on ourselves.

As in the US, Britain and France, hateful and divisive sentiments are afoot within the majority population. In Australia and these other polities, there is a sense of tearing as the social fabric is rent by punishing economic conditions, high migration, malicious disinformation, rank gullibility, and the constant disorientation of technology.

Add in unresolved grievances about COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccines, overlapping sovereign citizen wing-nuttery and glaring Western hypocrisies in Ukraine and Gaza, and a growing vogue for vigilante-ism is possible.

This is the agar for the scourge of intolerance. ASIO fears either spontaneous or planned violence, meaning the type seen in multiple British cities over the weekend or the more targeted variety as undertaken by an Australian in New Zealand in 2019.

An argot of anger and anarchy abounds, reinforcing an appetite for chaos. A clear accelerant is false online information fuelling mob violence. A foretaste occurred just weeks ago outside a Western Sydney church.

With baying mobs, overreaction is inevitable, like the Cold War but with more of a hair-trigger.

Not for nothing did Prime Minister Anthony Albanese name a special envoy for "social cohesion" in his reshuffle.

Nor too, a trio of Western Sydney-based ministers who determinedly broke ranks with Australia's slavishly pro-Israel stance to air the perspectives of Muslim and Arab citizens.

But it is not enough for rightly Australians aghast at the unrestrained loss of innocent life in Gaza over which official policy remains all but rhetorically unchanged.

In Britain the newly minted Starmer Labour government confronts senseless violence. Similar scenes are possible here - shredding our boast as the world's most resolved multicultural nation.

Addressing these realities cannot be left to the spooks. Rather, Australia's political leadership must come together as never before to stress undented unity and common bonds.

With an election just months away, this is a moral test for Albanese's leadership but for Dutton's, too.

As the leader of the most right-wing Coalition since its inception, Dutton must show that when push comes to shove, his love of country exceeds his lust for office - that his patriotism outweighs his personal ambition.

Mark Kenny is the Director of the ANU Australian Studies Institute and host of the Democracy Sausage podcast.