He is responsible for the repetitive television advertisements calling on the Howard Government to act for West Papua, and he is about to embark on a letterbox campaign to sway votes away from the Liberal Party in the marginal seat of Eden-Monaro.

So who is Ian Melrose? Owner of the Optical Superstore, a chain of 50 stores offering glasses and eye testing, Melrose, a Perth accountant, invested wisely and ended up richer than expected. He channels the surplus into a particular brand of philanthropy with a political twist.

"I have money, I don't need any more money, and it upsets me that my country has acted as poorly as it has." Rather than directing his superfluous wealth into luxury yachts or polo ponies, Melrose chooses to spend it on his multimillion-dollar mission to emancipate the people of West Papua from Indonesia.

"It all relates back to people's capacity but our capacity to give more is greater than other people's capacity, so we put our money where our mouth is. More to the point, we put our money where our morals are."

For Melrose, his morals were activated when he read a 2004 newspaper article telling of the extent of the poverty in East Timor, formerly occupied by Indonesia.

"[It] described the death of a Timorese 12-year-old girl who regrettably died of roundworm, 20 to 30cm long roundworm, infestation. She hadn't eaten for two to three days. The worms in her abdomen, searching for food, went to her stomach, still no food, and then went up to her throat and choked her to death.

"It upset me. I walked around the house a few times. I read it again and decided that I wasn't going to accept my country, Australia, the richest country in Asia, stealing from the poorest country in Asia, East Timor."

Aware of the negotiations to carve up East Timor's oil and gas revenues, Melrose decided to launch a campaign lobbying the Australian Government to give the new nation a fairer proportion of the profits to provide money for improved health services.

His campaign included television advertising designed to shame the Government for what Melrose saw as its avarice and misuse of power.

"The Australian Government then proceeded to well, to put it as bluntly as a bricklayer then proceeded to screw East Timor, to take what under international law would not belong to us.

"You and I can't decide to withdraw recognition of our courts, you get a speeding fine or a parking fine you can't decide you won't recognise the court and not pay it.

"The Australian Government did something similar to that, that is it decided to withdraw from international law and wasn't going to be bound by international conventions and international standards in relation to this matter."

Melrose says his intervention shamed the Howard Government and changed political history. "It did make a difference and [the East Timorese] did get more than they were going to get."

Now, while he continues to be involved in funding health programs in East Timor, with the assistance of the Optical Superstore's coffers, his political attentions have swung firmly towards West Papua.

"The common theme with East Timor and West Papua is that both countries have been invaded by the Indonesian military and they've both been brutalised by the Indonesian military."

Which is why lounge rooms nationally have withstood repeated televisual visitations from Clemens Runawery, Wim Zonggonau, Sonia Vitro and Hugh Lunn, who tell of the tyranny of the Indonesian military and the Australian Government's complicity in human rights abuses.

"The focus is the Australian Government and our foreign policy is responsible for people's deaths, and that's not good. It's the ugly truth."

The maverick Melrose concedes the ads have been designed to be repetitive, even to irritate, in order to get the message into the minds of the Australian population.

He also admits the Canberra audience cops an additional serve, with the ads screening on high rotation during parliamentary sitting periods because, "All the bees come to the honey pot."

These days the benefactor doggedly avoids talking about dollars, but by 2005 the East Timor TV ads had accumulated a price tag of about $900,000, which was in addition to the outlay for political lobbying, other media advertisements, and mail outs.

"Our business has a social conscience, we did give quite reasonable amounts of money to help programs in Timor, not small amounts."

Asked if he has business partners, he replies that three of his stores are jointly owned, and those shareholders, luckily, support his fervour for a cause. "The people who own them are of the same mind, it's discussed with them, they all agree."

His wife also shares his interest and has used her skills as a dietician in East Timor. However, he doesn't know how his 14-year-old daughter and 18-year-old son feel about him spending their inheritance on his campaigning. "I actually haven't asked that question, I might not like the answer."

Regardless, he's not about to stop and is gearing up for a federal election onslaught. Last election he campaigned in three marginal Adelaide seats, but this time he's upping the ante by targeting 16 marginal seats nationwide, including Eden-Monaro.

"In the 2004 election I focused on three marginal Liberal seats, two of those marginal Liberal seats were lost."

One of those seats alone contained more than 14,000 Optical Superstore customers, who were sent material designed to highlight the winter/spring range of spectacles, as well as sway votes away from the sitting Liberal candidate.

The pamphlets provided information on the oil and gas negotiations and an appeal for patients to "Please make John Howard and Alexander Downer's Government act honestly for Australia", showing that not only business partners but customers of Melrose's enterprises are conscripted to his causes where possible.

In Eden-Monaro the letterbox drop will go beyond the Optical Superstore database to target the entire electorate.

"There are certain people that are staunch Labor and others that are staunch Liberal and they'll never change their position. A lot of people that are sitting on the fence they may not be happy about Labor and Liberal environmental policies, climate change policies, they may be unhappy about foreign affairs issues as well. It doesn't require many people to change their position and there's a change of that seat."

Liberal incumbent Gary Nairn will be suffering for the sins of the Government.

"The campaign really comes down to, and it's a big ask, but it's trying to get the Howard Government to act honestly. That's not an easy task to achieve."

But a change of government may not be the solution because Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has refused to meet Melrose. So a campaign objective is to move votes toward the minor parties.

"I hope that the Greens and Democrats gain extra power. Because they do have a conscience." And conscience is what Melrose says he's all about. It's not money, it's the people's lives, and the way they've died because the Indonesian military doesn't just put thoughts in people's minds, they specifically torture them to death."