Jeremy Hanson has no hesitation about appearing in his army fatigues in Liberal campaign advertising, despite controversies that forced federal politicians including Mike Kelly to resign as army reservists.
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Mr Hanson is not an army reservist and no longer has a military connection, after ending his 22-year military career in 2008 to seek election.
The ACT Liberals' latest advertisement features photographs of Mr Hanson in the army when he served in the peacekeeping force in East Timor in 2000, and when he commanded the Australian Army training team in Iraq in 2007.
Mr Hanson said he formally retired from the standby reservists in 2015, and there was no restriction on people using photographs from their military careers if they were no longer serving.
"The community wants to know what politicians did before they entered politics. I am putting my hand up to be the chief minister of the ACT and people have a right to know what shaped me, what experience I have, what qualifications I have to do the top job," he said.
In the federal election campaign earlier this year, Labor candidate for Eden Monaro Mike Kelly was asked by Defence to remove photographs of himself in uniform from campaign material. Instead, he resigned from the army reserve.
Liberal backbencher Andrew Hastie was sacked from the army reserve during the campaign for refusing to remove photographs of himself in uniform from campaign material.
ACT Liberal campaign director Daniel Clode said he had considered the issues raised by the federal cases, but Mr Hanson was not a reservist and was fully retired from the army.
"The public record is pretty clear on what the standard approach is, that people have to make the choice one way or the other," he said. "Once you've moved on from military life your military background is part of your CV, within appropriate boundaries. Those photographs are a part of who you are and what you've achieved."
Mr Clode said the Liberals would continue to emphasise Mr Hanson's army career, including in a brochure out later in the week.
"As someone who has worked for the Defence Department he has been responsible for input into budget decisions that are considerably bigger than the ACT budget itself," Mr Clode said.
"He's not like one of these juvenile ex-student-politician ACT hacks who has no real life experience. He's run significant operations, he's been a peacekeeper, he's served in war zones, he's run complex operations, he's trained thousands of people, taken on much more responsibility than the vast bulk of ACT politicians you come across."
Neil James, head of the Australian Defence Association, said the key issue was whether the public could misconstrue political advertising as the military's endorsement of a candidate. While it was acceptable for candidates who were ex-army personnel to use photographs in uniform, it should be in context.
It should not be the main picture in a poster or on the front of a brochure. While he had not seen the Liberals' televison advertisement, Mr James said the brochure was "a good example of how not to breach the non-partisanship convention in electoral material".
"No reasonable and objective person could surely argue that the pamphlet is deceptive in misrepresenting ADF endorsement of his candidature or as misrepresenting an ongoing relationship with our defence force (which does not exist anyway as he is apparently not an active or standby reservist)," he said.
Mr James said it was a longstanding Westminster tradition that "to keep the gun out of politics you've got to keep politics out of the gun".
"Defence must always be apolitical and be seen to be so. So wearing uniform in advertising has to be done very carefully so you don't contravene the convention."
