Liberals squirm as Abbott refers to 'the suppository of wisdom'

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SKETCH

“No one,” Tony Abbott told a Melbourne gathering of Liberal Party faithful, “however smart, however well-educated, however experienced … is the suppository of all wisdom”.

The Opposition Leader's travelling mentor, Philip Ruddock, squirmed and the Victorian MP Josh Frydenberg took a few seconds to register what his leader had said.

“Suppository?” Mr Frydenberg mouthed to a grey-haired man standing next to him. The man nodded gravely, perhaps recognising that Mr Abbott intended to say repository, a place where things are stored.

Gaffe: memes are doing the rounds on Twitter.

As so often happens these days with political gaffes, within 30 minutes the hashtag #suppository was trending on Twitter, accompanied by photo-shopped images of Mr Abbott with suppository-inspired captions (“know your enema”, “squeezing out a policy”, etc).

It didn't help that Mr Abbott's slip-up reminded people of Tony Windsor's claim that the Opposition Leader told him he would do anything to secure a minority government during negotiations after the last election, except "sell my arse".

Mr Abbott had flown to Melbourne after debating the Prime Minister on Sunday night in Canberra. The trip had two purposes: first, to spruik the Liberal candidate Michael Sukkar, who hopes to steal the marginal seat of Deakin from Labor; and second, for Mr Abbott to commiserate over Melbourne's terrible traffic and repeat his promise to spend $1.5 billion building the east-west link.

First stop was the VicRoads traffic management centre in Kew – a stuffy office where about a dozen people watch traffic for a living. Three rows of computers and four giant screens scan every road, freeway and traffic light in Victoria.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott addresses the party faithful during a campaign office event in Ringwood, Victoria.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Mr Abbott wanted to see the traffic jams that his new road could clear. He had even brought along the Victorian Premier Denis Napthine to talk about the torments of Melbourne's “congestion”. But frustratingly for the traffic centre staff, who were determined to show the politicians a good time, Monday was, in the words of one manager, “a dream traffic morning”.

“What are the bloody chances?” the traffic manager whispered to a colleague, as the monitors showed cars flowing freely in all directions.

#suppository: trending on Twitter.

Then something approaching a miracle happened. The minute Mr Abbott entered the office a long row of cars came to a standstill on the off-ramp of the Eastern freeway. It was exactly where the Liberal Party's new road would come in handy, one of the experts said. The Opposition Leader grinned and posed for the cameras in front of the traffic jam.

At the press conference, Mr Abbott was asked about the latest opinion polls (answer: he doesn't worry about polls, only the Australian people); claims that Kevin Rudd cheated by using notes in Sunday night's debate (answer: he's more worried about what the Prime Minister said than what he did); and whether he had any data to support his assertion that the economy would always be better under the Coalition (answer: not so much).

“I would like to think that should we win the election, I will be known as an infrastructure prime minister,” Mr Abbott said.