Yes and no. It was the pinnacle in a series of bizzare behaviour from Tony while he was the Prime Minister. Certainly its the one people most remember of him. Keep in mind he ate it with the skin on as well. I think its also something people look out for, with the previous PM Kevin Rudd being somewhat infamous for eating his own ear wax on live TV.

When I was working on an archive project for the ABC, "tony eating onion" or some variation was the most common thing people searched for in the system when they first started using it.

He doubled down and did it again another time.

More bizarre was that time he froze and didn't speak for 30 seconds when asked a difficult question by a reporter about his "shit happens" comment. Justin Trudeau did the same thing recently when asked a question regarding Trump.

> I think its also something people look out for, with the previous PM Kevin Rudd being somewhat infamous for eating his own ear wax on live TV.

… as a stunt? On a dare? Why?

It was during a long question time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ipvdBnU8F8

The earwax thing was during a long boring session in parliament, so not exactly Live TV

Oh, well that explains it, then. Perfectly legitimate behaviour. /s

The context: he was on a PR tour of a farm (or factory or something), and grabbed it from a pile and just started eating it like it was an apple, whilst continuing the tour. It caught the public attention at how normal he made eating a raw onion look.

Time to put out an alert on raw onion-eaters

When you use it to hide the breath of an alcoholic, yes.

He ate it with the skin on, too.

Yeah same. It's pretty common for restaurants and households to have raw onion in the salad (at least in north India). Unusual for someone to eat them with the skin though.

But that would be chopped or otherwise separated onion right? Not eating an onion the way one would eat an apple.

My fiancée has been to the Azores and told me she's seen old people eat onions like apples there