Action Blogs

by Jason Wilson
 

by Scott Bridges

I like the Senate. Like, I really like it. Not only is it the Australian Parliament's house of review, which is really important and awesome and everything, but it's also a magnet for all sorts of ideological and single-issue nutjobs that make it a refreshing change for all of us political tragics who are accustomed to a diet of boring whitebread pollies such as Kevin Rudd. (Just like a Sunblest devon sandwich they're soft and give the illusion of being meaty, but ultimately lack taste and nutrition.)

Australians are famously relaxed about politics despite the crucial role that it plays in our day-to-day lives -- I reckon that if voting were voluntary we would seriously challenge the UK and the USA for the title of most apathetic (pathetic?) democracy in the West -- but there is a core group of true-blue Aussies who love politics and all it stands for so much that they decide to have a crack it themselves. And the inevitable target of their quixotic tilts is the upper house at the lower end of the political food chain: the Senate.

These efforts by lovable and twisted, yet ultimately harmless, fruit loops are the stuff of Aussie legend, and if they're not they should be. We should have our latte-sipping, black armband-wearing teachers tell kids these stories in our lefty indoctrination camps schools. And by Jove, 2007 was a good year! There were some real doozy candidates who stood up and gave their all for Oz, even though their all was nott quite good enough to stop them from failing miserably. One of the best was Stewart Glass, independent South Australian candidate, whose insightful hammer metaphors and dinky-di video production secured him a massive 65 votes. Well, 64 votes when you subtract Stewart's vote for himself.

(Of course, there was also Lachlan Connor, independent Victorian candidate and 2007's only imaginary candidate, who didn't get anywhere near Parliament House but got excruciatingly close to the Big Brother house.)

But every now and again, instead of chewing up and spitting out the pretenders, the system crosses the streams, or leaves the spare plutonium in 1985, and the one of these Senate-dreaming nutjobs scores a fluke of tragic proportions and actually gets up.


Hi, I'm Steve Fielding and I'm here to help.

It's times like these that you've got to hand it to the Australian Senate. What other political organ in the world could hand a share of Federal power to a man who attracted just 1.88% of the popular (sic) vote? At the 2004 election only 56,376 people put a '1' above Steve Fielding's name on the ballot paper, but due to the intricacies of the Senate voting system (let's not get started about that travesty of democracy), and the preferencing idiocy of every other party on the Victorian tablecloth, Fielding gets to plop his bum on a red leather seat for six years despite being comprehensively outvoted by others who missed out. I mean, love or hate The Greens, you've got to feel for the poor bastards when they attracted 207,175 more votes than Fielding and didn't get a Parliamentary printing allowance. Blimey, even the Democratic Labour Party (who?) got more votes than Fielding.

Like I said, the Senate rocks.

Steve Fielding is a member of a teeny, widdle political party called Family First, and is its only federal representative. "Only" in the present tense-sense that he's the single representative, and "only" in the future tense-sense that he's bound to enter the federal Parliament's history books without a single other Family First member ever joining him on its pages. It's no secret that Family First is the political wing of the Pentecostal Church and shares its philosophical base, just as the ALP represents and shares bodily fluids with the union movement. And not that there's anything wrong with religion -- some of my best friends are religious -- it's just that I can't stand it when people who make judgements based on religious thinking won't admit that it's blind faith and arbitrary rules on which they base those judgements, instead dressing up their stance behind fluffy words such as, um, I don't know, "family".

It's bollocks. If Fielding belonged to party called Conservative Religious Values First then I'd have so much more respect for him. Just be honest, Steve! You see, the whole "family" facade crumbles under the lightest scrutiny. For instance, "teh gays" belong to families but Fielding does not believe that gay families should be first. Women are also members of families, and some women choose to have abortions, but they're not the kind of families that should come first either. Basically, Family First believes that families should come first as long as that particular family has beliefs, desires and values that just happen to align perfectly with those idealised by the Pentecostal Church. Perhaps a more accurate name for the party would be Family First Unless You're In The Wrong Kind Of Family And Then It's Family Last.

So anyway, Steve has taken his place in the Senate for six years, knowing deep in his heart of hearts that he has absolutely no chance whatsoever of re-election because he knows he really shouldn't be there in the first place. And what does he do? Does he put his head down and work quietly and studiously for his constituency? Does he put his shoulder to the grindstone and do his best for all "families" Nope. He does stunts in a lame and futile attempt to infect enough consciousnesses with Fielding Fever to keep his job beyond 2010.

One of the most brilliant sources of pathetic stunt gold in the intertubes is Steve Fielding's video news page. It's where Steve posts videos he done shot of himself on his digital stills camera. Please take an hour to have a look through the archives, but some of the highlights are Steve's son's school swimming final, Steve doorknocking, Steve talking rubbish, and Steve at the ANZAC dawn service (see here for background on Steve's disgracefully disrespectful behaviour while taking that particular video).

But Fielding doesn't just get up to silly hijinks on the interweb. He takes his wacky, zany brand of politics to Parliament House as well. To support his push for a national bottle recycling scheme Steve showed up for work dressed as a giant bong. He reckons it was a brown beverage container but the Australian electorate can read between the lines.


Water needs replacing?

It was a stunning act for such a committed anti-drugs campaigner (because they're bad for families, mmmkay?), but it only got worse when a few days later he posted a video on his website that encouraged the recycling of plastic drink bottles. Again, the electorate could read between the lines and went looking for hose pipe and tin foil.


This is the pre-recycling shot

And then a couple of months later Fielding hit the streets and took off his shirt along with a dozen or so pensioners in a stunt designed to draw attention to the size of the pension. However, despite the presence of uncovered 70 year old breasts, the Australian electorate's attention was drawn to Steve's Mr Bean-esque physique and caved in chest. Dude needs to get back into his Reebok Step.


Get a room, you two.


Putting aside the silly stunts, though, Steve Fielding entered Parliament with absolutely no mandate, promising to make each decision by considering the best outcome for "families", yet he very quickly lowered himself to petty horse-trading in support of conservative religious values. Remember the collective amnesia after the I'll trade you one voluntary student unionism for one RU486 ban conversation? That worked out well, didn't it, Steve? It turns out that even the conservative religious values can be bought.

Looking ahead to 1 July 2010, which will be (barring another preferences disaster) the Senate's first Fielding-free day since 2004, I have mixed feelings. Steve's final flight home from Canberra will be good for democracy but a disaster for Senate tragics such as myself. Whatever will I blog about and whoever will defend the Pentecostal Church's agenda families? As much as I yearn for the day that Steve Fielding and his agenda-that-dares-not-speak-it's-own-name goes away forever, I hope to God that there will be many more nuggets of Fielding gold in the meantime.

Scott Bridges writes at satirical Melbourne-based blog, Grodscorp.