If Peter Beattie makes it into federal parliament, he certainly won't be the first former state premier to make the move to Canberra.
His run for the marginal Liberal-held seat of Forde comes 17 months after Foreign Minister Bob Carr, NSW's longest continuously serving premier, was parachuted into the Senate.
This came more than a century after former NSW premier George Reid became Australia's fourth prime minister, and six decades after Jack Lang served one term in the lower house.
Howard government finance minister John Fahey, the man Carr defeated in 1995, also moved from state to national politics.
But senior coalition frontbencher Scott Morrison insists Fahey's circumstances in 1996 were different to Beattie's, who has been parachuted into Forde at the expense of endorsed Labor candidate Des Hardman who was convinced to step aside.
"He (Fahey) was from that community, representing the community he was the state member for," the former NSW Liberal director told reporters in Brisbane on Thursday.
During the 1990s, Western Australia's first female premier Carmen Lawrence served as health minister in the Keating government after losing a state election.
If Beattie defeats LNP incumbent Bert van Manen by overcoming a 1.6 per cent margin, he would be the first former Sunshine State premier since Vince Gair moved to Canberra in 1965 as a Democratic Labor Party senator.
In 1927, Labor's Ted Theodore ran in an inner Sydney seat and became a depression-era treasurer in James Scullin's one-term government.
During this period Joe Lyons, a Tasmanian Labor premier during the 1920s, switched to the conservative United Australia Party and served as prime minister from 1932 to 1939.
Thomas Playford II, South Australian premier during the late 1880s, moved into the Senate during the early years of federation and nearly 100 years later, another conservative former SA premier, Steele Hall, served in the Senate from 1974 to 1977 and later in the House of Representatives.
The Northern Territory's first chief minister Paul Everingham served one term in the lower house during the 1980s, while the ACT's Gary Humphries lost his Liberal preselection for this election after a decade in the Senate.
