Disillusioned regional NSW voters have been drawn like bees to honey in recent history to the Shooters Fishers and Farmers Party, which at one point held three NSW parliamentary seats. Their latest senate tilt is headed up by an apiarist, Shane Djuric.
The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party's NSW lead senate candidate Shane Djuric preferred to focus on farmers and biosecurity, rather than federal firearms policy, in an interview with Flow on Tuesday.
Hawkesbury councillor and apiarist Shane Djuric shared his own awareness of the risks of poor biosecurity in the bee industry:
"We've now got a concern with more issues coming from overseas, we need to do more about that. We've ... got an issue of shipping containers coming in with live bees inside the shipping container, they're carrying mites on the bees - that's a massive risk to agriculture in this country."
Responding to a question on whether law-abiding firearms owners should be engaged in feral animal control:
"We certainly don't want to be dropping 1080 (poison) and the like into national parks where we're killing every animal in a 5 kilometre radius - it's definitely the way to go in pest control, that's for sure."
Mr Djuric spoke about the recent opening of the second river crossing from Echuca to Moama as something that took generations to achieve and said communities were upset by politicking over the achievement.
The senate candidate spoke about the recent departure of Murray MP Helen Dalton from the Shooters' team to become an independent:
"We had a lower house member but parted ways with Helen Dalton - we're looking at having a good hard go at the seat of Murray at the state election."
Hear the full interview with Shane Djuric on the Flow podcast player below: