It was a year to the day of taking over as Labour leader that Phil Goff finally got his first real "good on ya, mate" reaction from the public.

It took race to do it - his visceral attack on Hone Harawira's "white mother f******" email was calling it the way many people saw it, and a step ahead of John Key's initial shrugged shoulders on the issue.

Goff started by calling it "racist" language.

By the next morning, Goff was still mad, but there was a bit more method in it. He called Harawira an out-and-out racist, attacked the Harawira family and dropped lines like "he bludged off the taxpayer" and "one rule for everybody".

It sounded like he was blowing a political dog whistle - code words that hit an intended frequency.

The message certainly got to talkback world, with arch-conservative Michael Laws declaring Goff relevant again.

Goff continued the race debate in the House this week, with a double-barrelled attack portraying National as beholden to Maori interests.

First Goff castigated the special deal that could give some iwi multimillion-dollar concessions in the horse-trading over the emissions trading scheme.

Then deputy leader Annette King went after National's support of the Maori Party's whanau ora policy which will give Maori separate money for their social programmes.

It points to a revised backroom strategy. This was the political "wedge" to follow the dog whistle.

By making National look as if it was giving special treatment to Maori interests, it could create discord among its support base - particularly the hard-core who find cosying up to Maori anathema.

The race card may not have been fully played, but Goff certainly had his finger on it, which left some of Labour's more liberal MPs feeling uncomfortable.

Key accused Goff of indulging in the politics of race, which Goff could plausibly deny.

Goff has never been tinged with racism. Labour's caucus, including its Maori MPs, was upset about the proposed iwi deal and the way it appeared to be reopening treaty settlements.

The attacks on whanau ora could be defended as jibes at National's flip-flop on race-based funding with the recent Iwi/Kiwi billboards a recent memory.