On the campaign trail, best beware candid signs lurking in the grass

Electioneering, as recent spectacular hostilities between would-be Coalition candidates for the Eden-Monaro byelection showed, is a fraught and sometimes dangerous business.

Parties on the make try desperately to ignore the suggestion that sometimes, metaphorical snakes lurk in the grass.

But now the Liberal Party finally has a candidate, Dr Fiona Kotvojs, things teetered on the very candid when Prime Minister Scott Morrison accompanied Dr Kotvojs to an event for the faithful at rural Murrumbateman, near Canberra, at the weekend.

Such occasions are usually carefully stage managed.

Party scouts check for unfortunate "exit" signs that could mar a happy picture, and make sure their candidate goes nowhere near such traps.

Liberals in the Eden-Monaro area still recall with a shudder the day then-prime minister Tony Abbott was caught by media cameras standing before a large shop sign in Queanbeyan reading "The Reject".

But things got hapless at Murrumbateman at the weekend.

There was Prime Minister Morrison standing alongside Dr Kotvojs, valiantly putting behind the Coalition any memory of the recent fiasco when the putative candidature of two senior NSW MPs, Liberal Andrew Constance and The Nationals' John Barilaro, collapsed in loud-mouthed acrimony.

And right alongside the Prime Minister and the new candidate lay a log bearing the words "Snake Habitat!"

Alex Ellinghausen got the picture.