Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been roasted on a satirical US TV show that presented a highlight reel of some of his stickiest slip-ups and cringe-worthy comments.

HBO satirical news program Last Week Tonight with John Oliver aired a segment mercilessly lambasting Mr Abbott, and presenting clips of his most embarrassing career gaffes in a tongue-in-cheek effort to explain why his personal approval rating may have plunged to 30 per cent.

Mr Abbott is due to meet US President Barack Obama next week on a trip to Europe, America and Canada.

The Prime Minister is introduced as the ‘‘hard-line, right-wing’’ politician who rose to power promising to be pro-business and religiously anti-immigration ... ‘‘literally’’.

The show cut to a clip from ABC’s Q&A program in which Mr Abbott had said: ‘‘Jesus knew there was a place for everything and it is not necessarily everyone’s place to come to Australia.’’

‘‘Exactly,’’ continued the voice-over. ‘‘Australia is for real Australians like Tony Abbott, who was born in London, England.’’

The four-minute segment jests that it is this kind of ‘‘rhetorical consistency’’ and the fact he has ‘‘personally insulted everyone in the country’’ that has won him admiration and popularity.

It also showed clips of Mr Abbott’s remarks about women - ‘‘what the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing’’; to homosexuals - ‘‘I feel a bit threatened [by homosexuality]’’; and to ‘that’ wink while speaking to a cancer-suffering elderly sex line worker that most recently landed him in hot water.

When Oliver was previously employed on the Daily Show he called Australia 'comfortably racist' and won an Emmy for a segment interviewing John Howard on gun control.

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Watch the video here (warning, strong language):