He's been trained to kill, dropped behind enemy lines, worked undercover and put his life on the line for the Queen, but now he faces the challenge of a lifetime - to defeat veteran Labor MP Ernie Page in the beachside seat of Coogee.
David McBride, 38, a former captain in Britain's elite Special Air Service, has won Liberal Party preselection in a bid to end Mr Page's 12-year run in Parliament.
His victory over ambitious right-wing candidates has sent shock waves through the Liberal establishment, not least because he was a card-carrying member of the NSW Labor Party until September last year.
He is one of the high-profile recruits who, says Opposition Leader John Brogden, will energise and rejuvenate the Liberals in time for the State election in March.
If the Coalition wins, Mr McBride has his heart set on becoming the State's next police minister, saying: "There has been far too much prosecution of the police force and not enough prosecution of criminals."
Now living in Coogee, he has travelled full circle since starting life in Sydney's eastern suburbs as the youngest of the four children of Dr Bill McBride, the world famous gynecologist who alerted women to the birth defects caused by the drug thalidomide.
He studied at Sydney University before going to Oxford. He then joined the British army, spending six years with the Blues and Royals, the Queen's household cavalry. He also served with the SAS and did tours of duty in Northern Ireland and the killing fields of Rwanda.
On leaving the army, he joined a London-based security company where his duties included "bodyguard work, recovering stolen diamonds, dealing with kidnap ransoms, that sort of thing".
In 1996 he played a starring role in Wanted, an adventure game-show made by Britain's Channel Four, which featured three pairs of contestants trying to elude expert "trackers" throughout Britain.
Back in Sydney in the late 1990s,
he gravitated to the ALP and took out membership but, say head office officials, did not attend local meetings of any particular branch.
He quit the ALP on September13, 2001, saying he had grown uncomfortable with some of Labor's foreign and economic policies.
He moved seamlessly into the Liberal camp. His sister, lawyer Louise McBride, is married to Greg Daniel, former head of Clemenger Sydney, the advertising guru of the NSW Liberals.
Meanwhile around the State, preselection for the election in March next year is in full swing.
Virginia Judge, who is the mayor of Strathfield, has been selected unopposed to succeed former police minister Paul Whelan in the Sydney inner-west seat of Strathfield.
Ms Judge, a former real estate agent and staffer with Fisheries Minister Eddie Obeid, is being challenged for the highly marginal seat by Joe Tannous, a Liberal councillor on Burwood Council.
The ALP is also attempting to launch the political career of Linda Burney, director-general of the NSW Department of Aboriginal Affairs - in the neighbouring seat of Canterbury.