For a political party with the word 'shooters' in its name, firearms legislation is way down the list of issues that Queensland Senate candidate Jeff Hodges is pushing.
He's first on the ticket for the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, which is making its first foray into Queensland politics after a successful showing in the NSW election earlier this year, winning three seats in the Legislative Assembly, putting them on par with the NSW Greens there.
Mr Hodges said the aim was to establish the party in Queensland at this election in order to put up a big showing at the next state election in October 2020, and local government elections due next March.
Toll roads are something he's stood for before, as a Brisbane Lord Mayoral candidate in 2016, when he founded the Consumer Rights and No-Tolls Party to contest the election.
"They wanted someone with a little bit of experience because the party's only fairly new," he said of how he came to be representing the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party.
Recognising that toll roads might not be a burning issue in western or far northern Queensland, Mr Hodges pushed a message of reinvesting in rural communities by way of water infrastructure, a sustainable game meat industry, better telecommunications and services to the regions, and returning mining royalties to the regions.
"Being a country boy, growing up here in Toowoomba, I know what's going on in the bush, how people are suffering," he said.
"We've got thousands of kilometres of gas pipeline all over the place but we can't provide water pipelines out for rural communities that need it.
"So what we want to do is make sure we get the investments out into the regions from all our mining royalties, make sure they go back out to where the money's coming from."
When asked what made his party stand out from the plethora of other right-wing parties contesting next weekend's election, Mr Hodges said he was sure the LNP had some good ideas but was equally sure his party could do a better job with fresh faces and fresh ideas.
"I think it's great there are a lot of choices and what I encourage people to do is look at the policies, look at what people do.
"I've stood for protecting our free speech and our civil liberties and no tolls and no privatisation - I've stood for that since 2013 in four different elections."
Returning to his theme of road tolls, Mr Hodges said the RACQ and NRMA had shown that less that 25 per cent of the money paid by motorists in fuel excise and GST went into funding roads.
"There's more than enough for roads," he said, presumably hoping to be able to influence Senate voting on road funding.
At the end of a conversation that also touched on possible GST rises and opposition to carbon taxes, Mr Hodges said the party wanted to strengthen the punishment for individuals who use guns in criminal offences, but also wanted to make sure that law-abiding people were not further restricted from accessing or owning a gun.
"Shooting is an Olympic sport. I've given talks for pistol and rifle shooting clubs on mental training and concentration and focus, so these are nice people," he said. "They're not fruitcakes out there terrorising people."
In his daily life, Mr Hodges has spent 39 years as a performance consultant who specialises in working with top coaches, elite athletes and sports clubs to enhance individual and team performance.
In 2004 he worked personally with Olympic cycling gold medallist Sara Carrigan, and he's also coached aerial skiing gold and bronze medallist Lydia Lassila.
He's unsure of the chances of himself or number two on the Senate ticket, Andrew Pope, at the election but he'll be exercising all his mental will that the sense of dissatisfaction he feels in the bush and the city results in a positive outcome for the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party.