“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise ... surprise and fear ... fear and surprise ... Our two weapons are fear and surprise ...”

Ahh yes, that moment when your attack becomes a joke. It is clear that the government’s chief weapon for winning the next election is fear, and there is zero surprise about it. It is such a well-worn tactic by conservative parties around the world that of course it is the one which a party led by Scott Morrison would pursue.

The current prime minister is like an advertising executive you go to see if you want your product marketed in a way that was successfully done by someone else four years ago.

And so we have fear of negative gearing, fear of power prices and power blackouts, fear that your retirement income is about to be raided and fear of migration and Islamic terrorists.

Taking a page out of Donald Trump’s book (as pretty much he does like a reflex now), Morrison decided that the real problem of terrorism was that it was not being called out as “extremist radical Islam”. So he took to Twitter and had a bit of a rant about the need for Muslim leaders to do more to stop terrorism.

And I get it. Terrorism scares people and there is no doubt there are those within our nation who would do us harm for ideological purposes. But the marvel of terrorism is that the message is always the same – we need to be fearful and we need to give the police more powers which strip away our privacy.

A terrorist kills a man in a tragic event in Melbourne? We need access to encrypted messages. Police foil an alleged planned terrorist attack in Melbourne? We need access to encrypted messages.

So logic-free has the debate become that the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, argues the ALP is against the legislation to allow access to encrypted messages because they have not come out in support of it. And yet that legislation is currently before a parliamentary committee investigating its worth. Yes now the government expects the opposition to support something before it is even reviewed.

Add in the mix the fear that migrants are ruining our cities with the prime minister calling for a reduction in migration.

The shift to fear often reveals a few holes in one’s argument. Morrison is now contradicting his own views from earlier this year, when he rubbished Tony Abbott’s call for a cut to permanent migration saying “it’s very hard to look at the data and see that that’s actually the problem”.

But that was then, now there’s an election to win. Though the reality is the worth of such a tactic is rather limited.

Morrison (and others in the LNP) might do well to ponder the impact Trump has actually had on the Republican party’s electoral fortunes in the recent midterm elections.

Take Orange county in California. This wealthy area – in 2016, five of the wealthiest cities in the USA were located within its bounds – has long been staunchly Republican, and was the birthplace of Richard Nixon and political home of Ronald Reagan. In the 2012, 2014 and 2016 elections just two of the six districts within Orange county voted Democratic. In the election earlier this month, all districts voted Democratic.

Yes there have been some demographics changes, but not that drastic. Rather it reminds one more of the Wentworth byelection.

At that election voters were clearly annoyed by the dull populism pursued by Morrison. Rather wonderfully, the SMH’s Tim Elliott at the time reported one voter saying with exasperation: “Next thing you know he’ll be blaming refugees for the traffic on Bondi Road.”

And so the fear ranges from migration and terror and also into economics. Here the chair of the economics committee, Tim Wilson, is keen to help out.

This week on Sky he laughably compared the prime minister’s call for Muslim clerics to address the problems of terrorism with the call for Christian churches to respond to the issues of abuse that were found in the recent royal commission.

Of course in that case the crimes were by employees of the churches and with often tacit knowledge of the churches’ executives. No one is suggesting the alleged terrorists are actually Muslim clerics.

But logic, who needs it? Certainly not anyone who came out of the libertarian romper room that is the Institute of Public Affairs, as did Tim Wilson.

Wilson as chair of the House economics committee normally would be investigating government legislation or perhaps broader economic issues such as competition, instead he is currently chairing an inquiry into the ALP’s policy on removing refundable franking credits.

One would think a libertarian might believe such a partisan review should be funded by the Liberal party itself, but of course like a good libertarian, Wilson seems only too eager to run to the bosom of a high-paying government position, and then to set about wasting public funds.

And so we have a government-funded inquiry into an ALP policy, which has mostly become a whinge-fest for self-funded retirees, who seem unable to appreciate that there is a public cost to a system which allows people to reduce their tax, and in this case ensures those who pay do not receive a rebate.

We should recall this policy was only introduced in 2001 – not long after John Howard also made negative gearing overly attractive by changing the way capital gains was taxed. So the policy is not altering something that has been around forever.

And let’s not pretend this will hit low-income earners the most. It will certainly hit those with a low “taxable income” – that’s the whole point. But this week, the Parliamentary Budget Office released some research into dividend imputation credit refunds. It found that 82% of all excess franking credits claimed went to the largest 30% of all self‐managed superannuation funds, and more than half – $1,366.2m was claimed by the top 10% alone.

And this week we also discovered the real cost of tax minimisation and tax cuts. The latest data from ABS on household incomes and spending found how important health and education spending was in reducing inequality.

But the importance is not just linked to income levels – age is also a massive factor.

Households headed by those over 65 account for 23% of the population but they receive 38% of health social transfers – things such as the PBS and public health services.

And while for the rest of the population these health transfers are worth 8% of their average disposable income, for over 65s they are worth 26% of their income.

Tax cuts and engendering a system that encourages tax minimisation has costs, and those who can end up harmed the most are those who suggest they “self-funded”. Public services are vital for older people, and their importance will only increase as people’s longevity increases.

We need to worry about policies that would inevitably see those services cut and would see people in need worse off. And that is something truly to be afraid of.

• Greg Jericho is a Guardian Australia columnist