He vowed to pardon himself for murder, joked about his penis, said he would kill his own children if he caught them with drugs and took a new swipe at Australia over its policy on the South China Sea.
Provincial crime-fighting politician Rodrigo Duterte continues to widen his lead with a profanity-laced campaign to be elected president of the Philippines at elections on May 9, polls show.
The chilling picture emerging in the majority Catholic nation of 100 million people is of a ruthless candidate who through bluster and one-liners is attempting to establish a dictatorship 30 years after a people power revolution overthrew the corrupt regime of Ferdinand Marcos.
If the polls are correct, Australia's traditionally strong defence and diplomatic relationship with the Philippines could be barrelling towards a cliff.
Pollsters are also predicting that Mr Duterte's deputy could be Ferdinand Marcos jnr, the son of the late dictator, who was forced to flee the country in 1986.
Turning up in a sports shirt and corduroy jeans at a business forum in Manila, Mr Duterte, 71, criticised Australia over its policy to remain neutral in the Philippines' bitter row with China over Beijing's build-up of islands in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.
"Why the hell didn't Australia, the Americans or even Japan stop it?" he said.
Mr Duterte did not mention that earlier in April Australian forces took part in war games with Philippine and US forces in those waters, angering China.
Nor did he mention that China's aggressive pursuit of its claim to almost all of the South China Sea, one of the world's busiest trade routes, has in recent years drawn Canberra closer to Manila.
Mr Duterte also repeated an earlier warning that he would be prepared to sever diplomatic ties with Australia because Australia's ambassador in Manila spoke out against a joke he made about raping an Australian missionary, whose throat was cut in a jail after she was raped by prisoners in 1989.
Mr Duterte, known by his admirers as "Duterte Harry" after the character played by Clint Eastwood, made his name as the mayor of Davao in Mindanao, the violence-wracked southern island where human rights groups accuse him of operating murder squads.
His crass style has shocked Catholic bishops.
At the business forum he defended his history of womanising, which included keeping two mistresses at cheap boarding houses.
"I was separated from my wife. I'm not impotent. What am I supposed to do? Let this hang forever?" Mr Duterte said, referring to his penis. "When I take Viagra, it stands up."
The key focus of Mr Duterte's campaigning has been pledges to wipe out crime nationwide within six months, declaring his presidency would be "bloody" and vowing to pardon soldiers and police charged with human rights abuses.
The promises appear to be resonating with millions of people in a country where crime has risen fivefold in recent years.
"You rape a child in my city? I will kill you," Mr Duterte said last year. "I have no problem with that."
In another speech he said "if everyone sits on their ass, we'll let criminals have they way. We have to stop f---ing our people."
But Mr Duterte has so far failed to outline his economic policies for a country that has shown strong growth under President Benigno Aquino, who is barred under the constitution from standing again.
Mr Duterte told the business forum he would double the salaries of security forces who will be ordered to destroy criminals.
"I will use the military and the police to go out and arrest them, hunt for them and if they offer a violent resistance … I will simply say, 'kill them all so we can finish this problem'."
Mr Duterte told the business forum he wanted to prioritise education, complete infrastructure projects and find a solution to Manila's traffic jams before refusing to answer questions and rushing to a campaign rally.
His nearest rival in the polls is 47-year-old senator and mother of three Grace Poe, the adopted daughter of late movie star Fernando Poe, who made an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 2004.
