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A veteran who assaulted a police officer and choked an RSPCA inspector in 2015 is the lead Senate candidate for Fraser Anning's Conservative National Party in the ACT. Shane Van Duren was sentenced to two years and six months of a suspended prison sentence and 200 hours of community service in May 2017, after an incident where police and RSPCA inspectors were attempting to seize his companion dog after he had freed it from an RSPCA shelter. Mr Van Duren said the Belgian Shepherd Kalu assisted him with post-traumatic stress disorder caused by his time serving as a soldier in East Timor. The dog was handed to the RSPCA after it was found wandering the streets and looking "thin," according to court documents. After the dog was taken, Mr Van Duren sliced through three wire fences to let the dog out of the RSPCA's Weston headquarters in December 2015. When two police officers and two RSPCA inspectors went to his house to retrieve the dog, Mr Van Duren refused to give it up. The situation turned violent, and Mr Van Duren punched a police officer in the face and strangled an RSPCA officer who was holding a can of capsicum spray. "I was only charged with assault because there's no self defence for police brutality," Mr Van Duren told The Canberra Times. "I pleaded guilty because I could have let her go sooner," he conceded. Mr Van Duren said the situation was exacerbated by the actions of the officers and inspectors. "No one ever gave me any lawful direction I could comply with." Mr Van Duren said the case wasn't relevant to his Senate run, and his dog had been returned to him because there was no basis for its removal. "If no one in the Senate brings a malicious case and steals my dog in front of my children, I probably won't choke anybody there," he said. Mr Van Duren said he had served his 200 hours of community service with the Returned and Services League and wasn't sure if his suspended sentence was still in place. He said he hadn't explored if it affected his eligibility to run for the Senate because the question on the Electoral Commission form didn't ask about suspended sentences. He was also involved in his brother Owen Van Duren's escape from a Thai jail by sailing on a yacht to Darwin last year. He said he couldn't comment on that case. Fraser Anning was censured by the Senate this month for extreme anti-immigration comments he made after the Christchurch massacre. His new party is running on a far-right anti-immigration platform. Mr Van Duren said he was running for Anning's party because he supported nationalism. "The key points of this election are globalism under an agenda of Islamification or nationalism under an agenda of freedom," he said.

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