Man up Strap on a pair, grow some balls, stop being such a complete and utter wuss (urbandictionary.com).

The bloke-ification of federal politics had infected the national debate everywhere we turned last week. Why, it had become a veritable sausage fest - from Immigration Minister Scott Morrison claiming Labor senator Stephen Conroy keeps showing ''how small a man he is'', to Liberal backbencher Stuart Robert's repeated demands Conroy ''man up'', and Prime Minister Tony Abbott's defence of Morrison as being ''strong'' and no ''wimp''.

Clearly, this Parliament is no place for namby-pambies.

The latest round of chest thumping broke out over Conroy's suggestion that Operation Sovereign Borders commander Angus Campbell had ''engaged in a political cover-up'' over asylum seekers.

Entirely justifiably, Conroy had been grilling Campbell over the government's secretive and militaristic campaign against boat people. But as things heated up, Conroy got carried away and said: ''You can't tell the Australian public the truth because you might upset an international neighbour … You're engaged in a political cover-up.''

Few would disagree that Defence - through Lieutenant-General Campbell's position as commander of Operation Sovereign Borders and the use of the Navy to repel asylum boats from our waters - has become key to the government's treatment of asylum seekers. Equally, it's clear that in the government's war on unarmed boat people, truth has often become the first casualty.

But for Conroy to impugn the motivations of a three-star general simply following orders was a bridge too far for this government. And so it set its foot soldiers after him.

Robert, who led the charge, is a 12-year army veteran who rose to the rank of captain before moving into politics. He told Parliament that Conroy should apologise but: ''He could not manage it. He could not man up and manage it … Our serving men and women deserve a lot better than this sort of grubby attack. They deserve an opposition leader who mans up.''

Robert was still at it hours later on Sky News, telling Senator Conroy three times more to ''man up''. And then he (I'm almost embarrassed to repeat this) challenged Senator Conroy to: ''Come after me; I'm a big boy, I can handle it.'' Had he completely lost his head? Sadly, no. It was a calculated message.

Since the election campaign, in which Abbott described Kevin Rudd as ''not man enough'' to stop the boats, and ''not man enough to leave well enough alone'' (by abandoning Howard-era border protection policies), Coalition parliamentarians have taken an increasingly hairy-chested approach to the debate about asylum seekers who come to our country in boats.

In a military setting, prevarication and doubts are certain death, and any deviance from the group is punished. And so, tied to the Abbott government's muscular defence of our borders and of our forces, are quite deliberate demands that we not be wimps; that we ''man up'' and fall into line.

These days, we barely blink when our prime minister says of Morrison: ''You don't want a wimp running border protection, you want someone who is strong.''

It's almost Freudian.

But not only does this muscular debate brook no criticism of our armed forces, it also allowed the government to spend two days going after Conroy in Parliament.

In the meantime, the government successfully batted away the serious unanswered questions about how, and why, 23-year-old Iranian Reza Barati died of head injuries in an Australian-owned detention centre in Papua New Guinea. And so effective has its strategy become that Labor - which maintains a nervous, but acquiescent, bipartisanship - seemed cowed.