Like their local counterparts, Matthew Guy’s Victorian Liberals, who enjoyed a minor “race row” of their own last week over a flyer handed out in the seat of Keysborough that outraged Melbourne’s African community, Turnbull and colleagues will shrug off any criticism that comes their way. The Keysborough affair brought attention to the question of crime and gangs and that's exactly where the Victorian Coalition wants the political debate to stay right up until the state election in November. Accusations of racism? The price of doing business. Loading African-Australians? Collateral damage.

This stuff is not pretty, but in Australian politics, it’s pretty effective. John Howard won three elections after he discovered the hardline stance on asylum seekers was a hit in the marginals and if the persistent calls of “racist dog whistling” ever bothered him, it never showed. A Liberal flyer about gang violence has drawn controversy. Credit:Twitter Things haven’t changed that much. If anything, the times suit a campaign that taps in those twin powerful emotions - fear of crime and resentment of foreigners. Trump and Brexit, exhibits A and B. Both Turnbull and Guy copped hell on Twitter over the radio slot and the flyer, but so what? Twitter is not huge in the marginal seats on Melbourne’s fringes where the gang rhetoric is aimed.