Desperate as he was to become prime minister after last election's hung parliament, Mr Abbott reportedly told independent MP Tony Windsor he would do anything to win government, except sell his arse.

On Monday, the Opposition Leader went even further, assuring an audience of mostly elderly Liberal Party members that ''no one , however smart, however well educated, however experienced . . . is the suppository of all wisdom''.

Mr Abbott'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.

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 rectally inspired captions (''know your enema'', ''squeezing out a policy'', etc).

Mr Abbott had flown to Melbourne to spruik Liberal candidate Michael Sukkar, who hopes to steal the marginal seat of Deakin from Labor; and 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 Vic Roads traffic management centre in Kew - a stuffy office where about a dozen people watch traffic for a living. Mr Abbott wanted to see the traffic jams that his new road could clear.

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''.

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.