It’s enough to bring tears to voters’ eyes.

Four years after Tony Abbott munched on a raw onion, resources minister Matthew Canavan has followed suit.

The Queensland senator posted footage of himself eating a brown onion with the skin still on during a visit to a Brisbane market on Sunday morning.

“Maybe [Tony Abbott] is on to something here,” he tweeted.

“Well I’ve never done this before, but I have been interested in what it tastes like,” Canavan said in the video

“Yeah it’s not as bad as I thought. [laughs] Maybe it will take off.”

Canavan is part of the coalition’s junior partner the National Party, which traditionally does not get much attention during election campaigns.

Canavan’s onion eating stunt attracted derision from social media users.

“That’s just plain old creepy!” Twitter user Row Macrae said.

“Does it taste like defeat?” Veteran Dave tweeted.

Earlier this year, Abbott explained what he was thinking when he took a bite of the onion at a Tasmanian farm.

“I thought the least I can do, for someone who was as proud of his product as this particular farmer, was take a chomp. It was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful,” Abbott told Sky News’s Andrew Bolt.

The strange eating habits of politicians are often a hot topic of public debate during election campaigns.

On polling day 2016, opposition leader Bill Shorten was snapped tucking into a sausage sandwich sideways.





