This was truer still in a race the government has spent months working overtime to give a khaki hue.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison's diary of events on Monday was predictable for an incumbent on Anzac Day, election or not. In some cases - such as attending a dawn service in Darwin - they were totally appropriate. His visit to Cazalys Palmerston Club later that morning, to pour beer and play two-up, was mainly for the cameras beaming images to voters around the nation, a political and marketing exercise.

The crowd gathered at the club excused him for it, genuinely chuffed with a visit from the Prime Minister. One voter, who had travelled to Darwin from south-east Victoria for Anzac Day, even leaned forward in the jostle of the media scrum to shake the Prime Minister's hand, and tell him he was doing a good job.

If anything, it would have been strange if Mr Morrison didn't show up somewhere to place bets and toss coins in a local venue. Call it an advantage of incumbency in an election season that includes one of Australia's most hallowed and important dates.

The question was how far the Coalition would go on Anzac Day. As it turned out, it completely overstepped the line. This wasn't just a display of predictable (and publicly accepted) opportunism. It became an attempt to exploit a day that is and should be reserved for the commemoration of men and women who died serving their nation, for paying tribute to veterans and military personnel currently serving.

The temptation proved too great for Defence Minister Peter Dutton, who leapt at the chance to turn up the rhetorical heat on morning television, saying Australia should prepare for war. Rather than reflect on the horrors and futility of war, as Australians have been urged for countless Anzac Days past, Mr Dutton drew a different lesson.

"The only way you can preserve peace is to prepare for war," he said.

"To be strong as a country, not to cower, not to, you know, be on bended knee and be weak."

Really? That's the one and only way to preserve peace? Surely the prevailing wisdom, reinforced on Anzac Day, is that the defence forces should be used as the last resort for a nation protecting itself. That, as Australian Defence Force chief Angus Campbell said once, diplomacy should be used with the goal that the military doesn't have to get involved. Or, that prosperity (doesn't the government have an economic message this campaign?) promotes peace. No, Mr Dutton said, peace through preparing for war. "That's the reality."

It was a horrendous message on Anzac Day, a date that runs emotionally deep for Australians, especially those with loved ones who have served. It overshadowed the day's events, threatening to give them a strange tint of jingoism. Of course, Anzac Day means something so different to that.

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Alone, the Prime Minister's comments at the dawn service, warning of an arc of autocracy and coercion in the Indo-Pacific, appeared justifiable and relevant. Anzac Day does involve, after all, reflection on events that have swept the world into the tragedy of military conflict. But coupled with Mr Dutton's rhetoric, they took on a different and perhaps uninvited meaning, along with Mr Morrison's statement a day earlier that Australia and the United States shared a red line when it came to a Chinese military base on Solomon Islands.

There are without doubt serious national security problems for Australia to solve. The federal government would do better to drop the bluster and get on with delivering critical defence hardware, such as submarines, after years of dithering and delay. As the saying goes, speak quietly, and carry a big stick. Or, at least a stick, to start with.

If rhetorical heat is all Mr Dutton has to offer, Anzac Day was not the time to use it.