The Curious Case of Senator Fielding
One of Canberra's most important and influential parliamentarians is a senator who refers to "physical policy" when he really means "fiscal policy", a term from the economic lexicon which he spells F-I-S-K-A-L.
I have been meaning to blog for some time about Steve Fielding, the sole senator from the Christian Family First Party, who often wields the decisive vote in an upper house where the Rudd government does not enjoy a majority.
A frequent casualty of grammatical fender benders, Senator Fielding's latest gaffes came in a press conference on Parliament Hill. ''You're talking about fiscal policy, are you?'' asked a reporter from Channel Nine, after the senator had used the expression "physical policy" three times.
''That's correct. Fiscal: F-I-S-K-A-L," he replied. I guess you could call it Fielding's "freakonomics"
Later on, Senator Fielding offered an explanation for his lapse. Since childhood, he has been battling a learning difficulty, which has made him a poor speller and an erratic public speaker. At school, he got 29% for English, but went on to get an engineering degree from RMIT University in Melbourne, and an MBA from Monash University, two highly-reputable institutions.
"I am certainly no dummy," he later said on radio. "I've got an engineering degree and an MBA and I didn't get it out of a Weeties packet."
Learning difficulty or not, Senator Fielding has long been something of an eccentric, and a natural self-publicist. Famous for his stunts, he once dressed up as a giant fizzy pop bottle to dramatize an anti-litter initiative, and turned up with a miniature shopping trolley to illustrate the hike in grocery prices.
As Annabel Crabb put it rather deftly in the Sydney Morning Herald, he is "the latest in a long line of boutique eccentrics to whom the Australian people, with their unerring collective ability to crack a joke at democracy's expense, have assigned a casting vote in the upper house".
Fielding has used that vote to block the government's alcopops tax legislation, and its emissions trading scheme. The senator says he has yet to be convinced of the scientific case that man is contributing to global warming.
What makes the Victorian senator so very controversial is that the influence he wields is so completely disproportionate to the votes he received. He was elected in 2004 with just 2,500 primary votes - or 0.08% of the total Victorian senate vote. Over 5 million people voted Labor at the 2007 election, but Senator Fielding has the senatorial power to block its legislation and thwart its mandate. Actually, the Labor party is partly to blame. In Victoria, it urged voters give the Family First party their preferences in a move to block the Greens.
His malapropisms are not the main issue. It is the might that he wields that, for many observers, makes Senator Fielding such a democratic oddity.
UPDATES: The Australian Federal Police has just announced it is launching a war crimes inquiry into the deaths of the Balibo Five ahead of Indonesia's invasion of East Timor in 1975.
As for ongoing saga of who performed first at the Sydney House, I returned to the library to triple check. Rolf performed on September 28th. The Mackerras/Wagner concert was September 29th.
I'm 
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