The government has spent the past week engaged in increasingly frenzied attacks on Labor’s supposed weakness on national security and China.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison was forced to withdraw a charge in Parliament that Labor’s deputy leader Richard Marles was a "Manchurian candidate". He also claimed Anthony Albanese was the “Chinese government’s pick at this election”.

ASIO director-general Mike Burgess has warned the escalating rhetoric, and politicisation of national security, was “not helpful” for the security agency.

As a May election looms, the Coalition has sought to highlight international uncertainties in an attempt to prove its stability credentials at home. But how is this tactic playing out in the suburbs and marginal electorates of Australia?

Today on Please Explain political and international editor Peter Hartcher joins Bianca Hall to discuss the effects the Coalition's verbal war on China is having at home.