A mischief of angry Twitter sewer rats has began a permanent protest vigil outside the Melbourne electorate office of Josh Frydenberg, further damaging the federal Treasurer’s chances of re-election at the looming poll.

“We’re here to cause as much mischief as possible,” said one of the rats that reeked of faecal and other decaying animal and vegetable matter so badly that The Bug’s reporter gagged reflexively and had to move back some metres and resort to a long boom microphone.

The rat told our Melbourne-based reporter they had been spurred into action by Mr Frydenberg’s recent savage attack on all Twitter sewer rats around the nation and his demand that they be censored and constrained in some way.

“So we’re here to pay him back big-time,” the rat said.

“As you can see from our poster, we’re calling out the Treasurer over his blatant hypocrisy as a supposedly proud Jewish man and to demand to know why he’s ignoring that faith’s strong commitment to the Ten Commandments.

“We’ve seen some of his recent election material and we’re here to remind him of that sacred Eighth Commandment, Thou Shall Not Teal!”

Asked if he wanted to elaborate on their protest by talking about Frydenberg’s independent candidate who is using teal as their campaign colour and if he wanted to add anything along the lines of why should voters support anyone ashamed of their party’s traditional deep-blue branding colour and who would wilfully try to trick voters using a colour he’s never used before.

And whether the sewer rats wouldn’t be at all surprised if a desperate Frydenberg goes the same way of his Jewish colleague, Dave Sharma in his Sydney electorate of Wentworth, by not also using teal extensively but also shamelessly and gutlessly eschewing the Liberal Party’s logo, the rat replied “We’ll chew anything!”

But he added quickly: “Just kidding. No, but seriously, I think we’re done here, right?

“It was really only a simple one-line joke,” he added, before snarling his upper lip and proudly revealing his shit-stained chewing incisors to reinforce the very fine points he had just made.