Ricky Muir has been building a car. It's a black 1998 model Holden VT Series 1 Calais 5.0 litre V8 and it's called PLTCLY INCRCT.
He started working on it a few months ago and just unveiled it at a burnout competition – Tyre Warfare – in the Victorian town of Bairnsdale.
But with Malcolm Turnbull about to pull the trigger on a double-dissolution election that threatens to cut short Muir's political career shouldn't he be out campaigning to keep his job rather than smoking up his tyres?
Actually, this is how precisely how an Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party senator campaigns. He's talking to his base.
The project was also a way to reconnect with his blue-collar roots after almost two years in the Canberra hothouse.
"I'm getting the skin off my knuckles, I'm getting grease on my fingers. I'm blue collar through and through and I miss manual labour on a pretty regular basis, to be honest," he told Fairfax Media in an interview.
If the Turnbull government gets its way, Muir will be free to return to blue-collar work shortly after July 2.
Dubbed the accidental senator, Muir attracted just 0.5 per cent of the vote in 2013 but got elected on the basis of an arcane preference deal – a feat he won't be able to repeat under the Coalition's new voting rules.
So to get re-elected, he'll need a much bigger share of the primary vote this time around – about 7 per cent.
Pretty much no one reckons he can do it, including Glenn Druery – the so-called preference whisperer whohelped him win in 2013 – who says Muir "voted himself into unemployment" by opposing Turnbull's building watchdog laws.
But the father of five insists he has no regrets.
"I'm not going to bow down to any threat that I'm going to lose my job. I'll happily lose my job doing what I think is right," he said.
"I voted with integrity and if I leave this place it will be with my head held high that I didn't bow down to intimidation and fear tactics."
He knows a thing or two about intimidation. When he first entered Parliament he fell under the sway of Clive Palmer, who has often been accused of bullying his colleagues to get his way.
But Muir – derided by the political elites as a "bogan", particularly after his car crash 60 Minutes interview – showed early on that he had a mind of his own. He quietly split from Palmer, and was soon followed by fully fledged Palmer United Party senators Jacqui Lambie and Glenn Lazarus.
The comparison to Lambie is instructive. Both came to Canberra with zero political experience, and both were sneered at. But whereas Lambie was strident – telling everyone in no uncertain terms what she thought about absolutely everything – Muir disappeared from public view to learn the ropes.
"Going from blue-collar background in rural Gippsland to Federal Parliament, in the national spotlight, was by far the biggest thing that is ever going to happen to me in my life. And I knew straight up that I need to take this slowly and carefully. For me that was the responsible thing to do."
He reappeared a little over a year ago with a maiden speech that was one of the best in recent memory. It proved he was a thoughtful and authentic addition to the chamber, rather than a blight on it.
Since then he has sought to treat every bill on its merits and vote with his conscience. Sometimes he pleases the left – such as with his support for same-sex marriage – and sometimes the right.
He believes he's grown his public profile enough in the last 12 months to now to stand a chance at re-election. That's why his party's logo is now a cartoon of Muir's grinning, bearded "noggin".
Of course, he has considered the possibility it's all about to end. But he doesn't intend to return to the sawmill.
"I would have to be engaged with politics in some way or another," he said.
"I'm going to maintain my high hopes here and work on the presumption that I will be re-elected. But in the event that I'm not? I'll just put on a brave face and say one way or another, I'll be back."
