All elections are, of course, fought on culture wars; but this feels different.

There’s a corrosive quality to political debate in Australia today, arguably made worse by the elevation of Donald Trump to the American presidency.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull made it abundantly clear this week that issues of identity would shape public discourse in the lead-up to the election.

He stated that Victoria had a “Sudanese gang” problem.

“There is real concern about Sudanese gangs,” he said on Tuesday.

Turnbull was echoing comments made earlier this year by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, who said Victorians were afraid to eat in restaurants because of so-called African gangs.

This characterisation of law and order in Victoria, or a perceived lack thereof, has been denounced by the nation’s African community.

Media coverage of the gang ‘crisis’ in the state has also been linked to increased reports of racial abuse.

As Katharine Murphy pointed out for The Guardian on Tuesday, crime statistics show there were 846 Sudanese-born offenders in Victoria in the year to September 2017.

Meanwhile, there were 59,048 Australian-born offenders.

Would these figures indicate an African gangs crisis? Probably not.

Even one of Turnbull’s Cabinet ministers, Christopher Pyne, has laughed it off.

In Devonport on Tuesday, a reporter asked Pyne whether he was afraid to go out to restaurants in Victoria, prompting the minister to chuckle.

“Why? Should I be?” he said.

Then he paused and corrected himself.

“Oh, because of the gangs, the violence…” he said. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t following you.”

Conservative media outlets such as the Herald Sun, The Australian and Channel Seven are often fanning the flames with their coverage of law and order in Victoria, too.

The Victorian state election will take place later this year, and the Coalition’s comments should be perceived in terms of bolstering the Liberals’ chances in taking down the Andrews Labor government.

But the African gangs debate shouldn’t be looked at in isolation.

There’s the exhausting debates over energy, over border protection.

A poisonous cloud hangs over Canberra.

It’s born of the adversarial Westminster system that governs our politics, but aggravated by other factors.

The rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in the 1990s saw Australia’s political debate kicked to the gutter and it’s been struggling to climb its way out ever since.

The push-and-pull of the culture wars doesn’t just occur across party lines, either – it’s also an inter-party phenomenon.

We see that play out in the ongoing battle between Turnbull and former Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Labor, too, is wracked by tensions over asylum seeker policy.

All this boils down to identity – and identity is inextricable from personality.

Our politicians need to stake less on their own political fortunes and more on advancing the quality of debate in this country.

Tone down the personality politics and the culture wars diminish.

And diminished culture wars equate to a more harmonious society. Isn’t that what we all want?