Turnbull wraps up week three on the trail

"Want to have a bite, PM," temptation hissed as Malcolm Turnbull stood surrounded by forbidden fruit.

It wasn't so much an apple from the Garden of Eden as a raw sweet potato from a Queensland farm but the consequences could have been similar.

Enter guardian angel, Barnaby Joyce.

"You know what eating that is called? A possible end to your political career."

And so, on day 18 of the campaign, the prime minister avoided political death.

Or at the very least, becoming the butt of the same jokes that haunted his predecessor Tony Abbott after his raw onion eating shenanigans.

But the oracle Joyce needn't have been too concerned.

While the coalition campaign has had some hiccups, Turnbull himself has largely avoided any major gaffes.

It was wingman Joyce who got himself into some trouble this week, linking asylum seeker boat arrivals to the former Labor government's live cattle export halt.

But for the prime minister, it was a relatively smooth week on the hustings as he travelled up and down the east coast, from the Great Ocean Road in Victoria to Rockhampton in central Queensland.

He received a rockstar welcome as he made his first visit to his eastern Sydney electorate on the campaign so far, and wife Lucy also made her debut on the trail.

He tried, and failed, to catch the Sherrin at the Richmond Football Club and had cuddle time with a puppy named Brando who licked his face on the NSW south coast.

The public transport-loving prime minister even got to ride a train.

All in all, an "exciting" week.