There was puzzlement, anger and complaints of “racist dog whistling” on Tuesday after the Prime Minister went on Neil Mitchell's 3AW program to carry on about “Sudanese gangs” when in the past he has left the dirty stuff to his tough guy Immigration Minister Peter Dutton.

Sure, nobody likes being called a racist, but in the end Turnbull and his senior Victorian MPs will be reflecting on a mission accomplished.

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.

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.

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.

Matthew Guy must pick up serious numbers of those seats if he is to prevail in November, and Turnbull's government is in such deep strife in federal electorates to Melbourne’s east and west that he could hold everything he’s got in Queensland at the next national poll and still lose the thing down here.

Politicians facing less dire straits have surrendered to the lure of the race card, so we should not be too surprised at the Prime Minister's behaviour.

Turnbull claimed on Tuesday that his Victorian colleagues had voiced their concerns to him about African gang crime here in Victoria.

But what’s more likely is the local Liberals whispered in the Prime Minister’s ear, telling him Guy is cutting through with his law and order campaign and they should get a piece of that action.

So you can call Turnbull a racist as much as you like. He won’t mind.