It came at the end of his first speech to the ACT Legislative Assembly in December 2004, an address which laid out his commitment to freedom of speech, religion and the traditional family unit.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter," Seselja said, paraphrasing a quote attributed to civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

"I do not intend to remain silent."

In the 18 years since that speech, Seselja has become the most polarising figure in Canberra politics.

The now-Liberal senator's style of hardline conservatism has made him a lightning rod for controversy and criticism in a town which leans to the left.

It has also made him powerful.

Seselja is a dominant and divisive figure in the Canberra Liberals, a factional player in the Coalition party room and a minister in the Morrison government.

But having risen to the peak of his powers, the 45-year-old's political career is now on the line as he fights to defend his seat from David Pocock, Kim Rubenstein and the Greens.

In the second part of a special report, The Canberra Times has spoken with multiple Liberal insiders, Seselja's past and current colleagues, friends, allies and enemies to chart his rise into the most influential right-wing politician in the ACT.

His supporters describe the father-of-five as a dedicated family man, a loyal colleague, a mentor and a politician who sticks by his principles.

His critics outside the party say he tries to hide his strident views and he's out of touch with mainstream Canberrans.

His critics inside the party paint the image of a man obsessed with political games and desperate to remain in power - whatever the cost.

Ros Seselja has had a front row seat during her husband's near two decades in the public spotlight.

She has seen the highs, the lows. The vitriol. The hate. The claims he doesn't stand up for Canberra. The claims far worse than that.

"He's polarising," she says.

"A lot of people don't agree with things that he holds close; his values and those sort of things.

"I know who he is. And he's, you know, a really wonderful person. And that's all I need to know."

To understand Zed Seselja's political motivations, to understand the vow he made 18 years ago and the stances he's taken since, you have to understand his family history.

Seselja's parents and relatives fled the communist regime in the former Yugoslavia, escaping to Australia in search of a life free of religious and political persecution.

While preparing for his maiden Senate speech in 2013, Seselja learned of how his uncle Stipan, a priest, was offered release from prison if he agreed to renounce his religious beliefs.

He refused.

"Thank God we don't have that [religious persecution] here in Australia, but that doesn't mean it can't get chipped away over time," Seselja tells The Canberra Times.

"We enjoy freedoms in this country that most people don't. So yeah, for me this is personal."

Zed Seselja was born in Canberra in March 1977, about six years after his parents Katica and Ljudevit - who emigrated from the old Yugoslavia - married in the nation's capital.

One of six children, Seselja recalls a normal, carefree upbringing in Canberra's southern suburbs.

He recently returned to his first childhood home in Kambah to shoot a campaign video. The house still stands but things have changed.

"The idea of kids playing on the streets and everyone knowing their neighbours ... that's been chipped away at in most parts of the world including here," he says.

He studied law and arts at Australian National University between shifts at Woolworths and as a cleaner at MacKillop College.

His first foray into government was as a legal assistant at the Australian Fisheries Management Authority in 1998, before moving to the Department of Transport and Regional Services.

Seselja always had an interest in politics but wasn't a member nor even rusted on to one party.

Fatherhood and Jon Stanhope and Labor's victory in the 2001 ACT election would change that.

"I'd sort of sit there and have a whinge about issues," he says.

"It was that sense that is not uncommon among people who go into politics where you say 'well, instead of just talking about it I guess I'll do something about it'.

"So I joined the Liberal Party."

He won a seat at the 2004 election, making him the first Australian of Croatian heritage to sit in the ACT parliament.

Hanging on the wall of the now Minister for the Pacific's office in Parliament House, alongside a selection of family photos, are two framed front pages of The Canberra Times.

One features Seselja staring into the eyes of his three-month old daughter Olivia on the day he became ACT opposition leader in December 2007.

It's the sort of memento one would expect a politician to keep.

The other choice is more intriguing.

"War in the Liberal ranks" blasts the headline on the second front page, which revealed the infighting which led up to Bill Stefaniak's leadership coup six months earlier.

The report laid bare the Canberra Liberals at their most dysfunctional.

It turns out that is precisely why it hangs on Seselja's wall. It's a reminder of the importance of unity.

The notion of Seselja as a unifying figure is heavily contested within Liberal ranks.

There is no disagreement that Seselja is the most powerful individual in the local branch, a position he has built since forming part of an ascendant right faction - alongside former ACT opposition leader Alistair Coe - within the Liberal's Assembly team through the late 2000s.

What is contested is how far his power extends, how it has been obtained and consolidated and whether it has benefitted or, as one insider describes it, "poisoned" the party.

"His power is frighteningly predominant in the division," one senior figure tells The Canberra Times on the condition of anonymity.

Another says he has an "iron grip" over the local branch.

The Canberra Liberals are run by a 15-member management committee, which includes the senator, Assembly leader and deputy leader, party president and chairs of the five local branches.

Insiders say at least 10 members of the committee are Seselja loyalists, including president John Cziesla. The rank-and-file membership, which numbers about 1000, is skewed heavily toward conservatives.

As a result, significant decisions at division or local branch level rarely if ever go against Seselja or his allies.

This is fundamental to understanding Seselja's political power.

Maintaining the support of the members ensures he remains atop the Liberal ticket, which for almost 50 years has meant a seat in the Senate.

Internal critics say Seselja has built his power through a range of means including surrounding himself with loyalists, freezing out dissidents, courting Young Liberals and recruiting new members through church communities.

Most of these claims, particularly about the recruitment of members through churches, are outright rejected by senior figures.

But Seselja's allies and enemies agree on one point: he is extremely adept at factional politics.

Seselja doesn't dispute that he wields influence in the party, but says claims that he controls the division and its members are "a bit of myth-making".

"There [are] close enough to around 1000 members of the Canberra Liberals and they are fiercely independent," he says.

"The idea that you can tell hundreds of them what to do is a little bit fanciful."

Seselja did suffer a rare loss last year, when former Howard government staffer Gerry Wheeler beat the senator's pick, Brian Weston, to become the chair of the Liberals' Kurrajong branch.

The vote was seen largely as a product of anger among grassroots members at the leadership's "deeply flawed" handling of an internal investigation into the destruction of Liberal Candice Burch's corflutes during the 2020 ACT election

Former Young Liberal president Ben Dennehy, a Seselja staffer at the time, was accused of doing the campaign sabotage and resigned from the party following a preliminary probe.

Insiders say there has been a splintering in the dominant right faction. Others play down talk of a divide.

Either way, with Coe carving out a post-politics career as a lobbyist, there is no obvious person capable of cajoling the party's conservative base into overthrowing Seselja.

Seselja's own highly ambitious move to challenge a sitting Liberal senator remains one of, if not the, defining moment of his career.

He reflects on the ugly preselection contest against Gary Humphries in early 2013 as "rough for everyone".

But he says no Liberal is immune from challenge, noting he was forced to see off a moderate - Sam Fairall-Lee - to win the nomination for the upcoming election.

Seselja had the backing of the Liberals' entire Assembly team in 2013, a letter obtained by The Canberra Times shows.

He also had the endorsement of former president Winnifred Rosser, who in a letter to members ahead of the vote described Seselja as the "future of the Liberal Party".

"Change is always difficult to embrace and it is easier to take the tried and true path," read the letter.

"However, I am firmly of the belief that whenever there is an opportunity for positive change one should run with it."

Humphries chose not to pick over old wounds when contacted for this article.

But he did comment about the upcoming senate race.

"Zed has the fight of his life ahead of him at this election," he says.

"He will need to pull out all stops to be able to convince people that they should stick with a Liberal Senator against a fairly powerful independent challenger."

Asked to list the biggest moments in his political career, Seselja offers three.

The decision to enter politics, the decision to up his hand for the Canberra Liberals' leadership and the leadership spills which ended Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull's prime ministerships.

Seselja was the public face of the failed push to install conservative Peter Dutton as Prime Minister in August 2018. He was among the first conservatives to resign from their portfolio amid the coup and appeared on ABC's 7:30 program to make the pitch for Dutton.

Seselja emerged from the chaotic week, which ended with Scott Morrison as Prime Minister, with a more prestigious assistant ministry.

"Someone had to do it," he says of his decision to publicly back Dutton.

"I've always believed that you should certainly be prepared to say what you're doing and why."

He still firmly believes the Coalition would have lost the 2019 election had Turnbull, not Morrison, been at the helm.

Seselja's role in the coup solidified his status as a prominent right-wing figure in the Coalition. He is a member of the famed Monkey Pod lunch group of conservatives led by Dutton and including Andrew Hastie, Angus Taylor and Claire Chandler.

Factional players tend to have internal enemies. Seselja is no different.

"He seems completely and utterly disinterested in policy - it's all about politics," one Liberal MP says. "He is very stand-offish and he isn't very well known to people in the centre of the party."

Seselja does remain close with Turnbull loyalist Craig Laundy, a friendship which was forged as members of parliament's "Class of 2013" and which managed to survive the 2018 leadership spill despite their different allegiances.

"I understood that he was supporting someone else. He understood I was. We never made it personal," says Laundy, who quit politics after Turnbull was knifed.

"It was a crazy time and not a heap of fun, but our friendship remains strong."

Laundy describes his friend as a "smart thinker", tipping him for a cabinet position in a financial portfolio in the future.

One of Scott Morrison's key allies says Seselja is known as "Mr Canberra" and a "kind conservative" within the Coalition and insists he knows, understands and fights for the ACT.

"No decisions are made without Zed either driving them or being consulted on them," Public Service Minister Ben Morton says.

"I think Zed's influence and role within the Liberal Party in the government is growing. And it's growing because of the respect in which many people have for him "

Katy Gallagher has sparred with Zed Seselja in two parliaments across a span of almost 20 years.

Yet the former chief minister-turned-Labor senator still doesn't really know her opponent.

"There's no reaching across the chamber. There never has been," Gallagher says.

"And I think that goes to the fact that I don't really know who he is like, you know, there's just not that personal relationship after working together for so long."

"He hasn't been upfront about who he is and what he stands for. And so that does elicit criticism.

"I think that's part of how he survives as a really kind of right-wing conservative in a town like Canberra."

Of many of the controversial moments over the past nine years of Coalition power, Seselja has been there. Sometimes at the forefront, but often not.

Gallagher says Seselja works in the shadows, lobbying behind the scenes to stymie progress on social reform without being the public face of the "no" camp.

Seselja infamously abstained from the historic same-sex marriage vote, having previously assured that he would honour the national result.

He voted against David Leyonhjelm's bill in 2018 which would have restored the ACT's right to legislate on voluntary assisted dying.

ELECTION UNDER THE MICROSCOPE:

Labor also accused him of blocking the ACT's inclusion in Sam McMahon's attempt last year to repeal the so-called Andrews bill - a claim he and the former Country Liberal senator have refuted.

Opposition leader Anthony Albanese has described Seselja as the "roadblock to the territory's right to legislate."

Far from the shadowy figure painted by Gallagher, Seselja's friends and colleagues describe a man who is upfront about his beliefs.

Canberra Raiders coach Ricky Stuart says of his friend: "I see Zed as a man who definitely sticks by his principles".

"I admire Zed's integrity, I really do."

ACT Opposition Leader Elizabeth Lee is from the opposite Liberal Party faction and has conflicting views on hot-button issues including territory rights.

But rather than hostility, there is admiration.

"I think Zed is what Zed is. He's a conviction politician. He always has been very upfront about his views and his beliefs and people know exactly where it comes from," she says.

If anyone understands the challenges of being a high-profile conservative in Canberra, it's Alistair Coe. The former ACT opposition leader's social conservatism was pilloried by his political opponents, particularly during the 2020 election.

"The ACT is a diverse place and we want people with a variety of views in our parliament," Coe says.

"Our parliaments shouldn't be comprised of people with all of the same views."

Had a few thousands votes been cast differently, Zed Seselja would have won the ACT election in 2012.

He, not Labor's Andrew Barr, might have been chief minister during Black Summer and through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Seselja doesn't deal in what ifs. He long ago moved on.

He became the first ACT Liberal to hold a ministerial portfolio when he was appointed Minister for the Pacific and International Development in December 2020.

Seselja says the role has been the greatest privilege of his career and if it is to be his political peak, he would be at ease.

As minister responsible for the Pacific, he's been subjected to criticism and mockery after his mid-campaign dash to Honiara failed to thwart the China-Solomon Islands pact.

Labor's Penny Wong labelled him a "junior woodchuck". Jason Clare simply asked: "who is Zed"?

Those can be added to the long list of names Seselja has been called in his time in politics.

Everyone, it seems, has an opinion about him.

So how would Seselja describe himself?

"I would characterise myself as a pretty ordinary suburban bloke," he says.

"That's fundamentally the way I see myself.

"I love nothing more than a Friday evening in front of the footy with a couple of beers and a pizza."