Serial goose, Family First’s Steve Fielding, is still proudly posting videos of him being a goose on the intertubes (remember his brilliant ANZAC insult?) One of his latest efforts is a rambling mess of a monologue and interview about his proposed national recycling scheme, and it is aptly entitled Steve down on the Yarra talking rubbish.

Steve’s been taking camera lessons from Brendan Nelson’s media people

Check out one of these rubbish quotes.

I’ve just stopped a couple of people here, I don’t know them. What are your thoughts about having a five cent or a ten cent recycling on the bottles of recycling?

And remember Steve’s Parliament House bong stunt? Well here is Steve telling us all about his Cash For Hash proposal.

Steve displays a plastic bottle about to be recycled into a bong

ps/- The page title of the talking rubbish clip is “Steve says hold your horses hear (sic) comes Family First”. What?

UPDATE (5.30pm): This image was just emailed to me by one Mr A. Rogenous, although I’m having trouble working out how he’s altered the original.

Perhaps this is the ‘after’ recycling shot?

I know that independent and minor party MPs and Senators need to try a bit harder than most politicians to get noticed. And I know that Steve (1.9%) Fielding, with his total lack of a mandate and even greater lack of a chance at re-election, needs to try harder than anyone else. But could he be any more of a joke if he tried?

Steve Fielding arrives at Parliament House dressed as a bong to highlight his party’s policy of a 10 cent bong recycling scheme.

Remember the last time that Steve Fielding said “jump” and Kevin Rudd said “how high?” I wonder if we’ll see it again.

Family First Senator Steve Fielding says the Federal Government should reduce the impact of further interest rate rises by cutting the tax on petrol.

[…]

“People are struggling to make ends meet,” he said.

“Petrol has fuelled inflation for the last couple of years. Now this is a significant problem, and it’s about time the Rudd Government really got a handle on this issue by cutting petrol tax.”

But do you know what the truly amazing thing about that story is? Fielding didn’t use the word “family.” Not once.

In July the new Senate will sit and the Labor government is facing trouble in the Upper House where their 32 Senators are significantly outweighed by the 37 coalition Senators. The five Greens are sure to side with the ALP on most issues, bringing the numbers of the loose “left” coalition up to 37 Senators — an even match with the Libs and the Nats. That leaves two men sharing the balance of power in Australia’s Upper House: South Australian independent Nick Xenophon and Family First’s Steve Fielding. That means that the Pentecostal Church, through Steve Fielding, holds the balance of power in Australian politics on the back of 53,302 Victorian votes. Ain’t democracy grand?

So there’s no doubt that Kevin Rudd and Labor strategists are willing to try almost anything to secure Fielding’s vote in the Senate to ensure the smooth passage of their legislation. But isn’t it a bit rich to simply implement one of Family First’s policies (PDF)?

Family First: FAMILY FIRST believes that, as a first step, we should filter the worst sites at the ISP level

ALP: [ALP] Senator Conroy says it will be mandatory for all internet service providers to provide clean feeds, or ISP filtering, to houses and schools that are free of pornography and inappropriate material.

Family First: FAMILY FIRST proposes a system that allows adults who want pornography to ‘opt in’

ALP: Senator Conroy says anyone wanting uncensored access to the internet will have to opt out of the service.

There is so much wrong with this absurd policy that I don’t know where to start. Most of these things have been covered adequately in other places around the (currently un-censored) intertubes so I might just focus on two things:

1) How dare the government try tell me what I can and can’t look at on the internet? And even if I get on the phone to my ISP and demand to be removed from this ludicrous scheme, how dare they slow down my internet feed even more than it already is because everything needs to get checked against a massive blacklist of “inappropriate” sites?

2) The filter will block arbitrarily chosen websites on a static government blacklist. (Who decides what’s “inappropriate” anyway? Oh, that’s right — the Pentecostal Church.) Despite the fact that no blacklist in the world can ever contain every website that contains a single pornographic image, will the filter block Google to stop kids from clicking on this? Will it block Flickr to stop kids from signing up for a free account and searching for this? Will it block websites that aren’t pornographic but are dangerous to the minds of all sane and free-thinking humans?

Basically the filter will cost massive amounts of money, will slow down everyone’s internet feed, and won’t stop kids from seeing pornography. But it will make Steve Fielding feel all good and righteous and encourage him to return the ALP’s favour sometime later this year.

I hope Steve Fielding enjoys his three years as de facto Prime Minister because in 2010 he and his disgrace of a political party are going to disappear from the Australian political scene forever. They’ll make One Nation look mainstream.

That politics and religion should be separated
(Read the whole debate)

Third affirmative: Magic Bellybutton

Since John is stubbornly refusing to see reason (and really, it is to be expected from people such as him), I’m just going to have to resort to treating this in exactly the same way as him – like a game

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:

FreedomJeopardy!

Rules are simple. There will be 5 answers. You must work out the correct question to go with this answer. Host is the host, Playa is the contestant. The money you win goes towards getting your family out of Iraq and away from America’s crusade.

First answer.

Playa: I’ll take Megalomaniacal Delusions for $100 thanks Host

Host: Ordered great monuments to be built by slaves as they were rulers seen as gods on earth.

Playa: Who are the Pharaohs?

Host: Correct.

***We interrupt this program to bring you some breaking news. Prime Minister Tony Abbott has announced that Steve Fielding is to be crowned King of Australia. We will give you more information as it comes to hand.***

Second answer.

Playa: I’ll take Random Acts of Catholicism for $200 thanks.

Host: No one expects this.

Playa: What is the Spanish Inquisition?

Host: Correct.

***This just in. Starting immediately, all laws will be reviewed to ensure that they adhere to God’s Will. All non-Christians, Homosexuals, Feminists and Pinko Lefties are to report to their nearest police station immediately for bar-coding and processing.***

Third answer.

Playa: I’ll take Utter Bastards for $400 please.

Host: Sycophants who can easily be bought by the Exclusive Brethren for a cup of coffee at Gloria Jeans

Playa: Who is the Australian Liberal Party?

Host: Correct!

***More breaking news: Fred Nile will be assisting the King in this review, while Cardinal George Pell has been given special permission from the Pope himself to be Australia’s High Inquisitor.***

Fourth answer.

Playa: How about…Religion = Stupidity for $300!

Host: He claimed that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were missions from God.

Playa: Who is George W Bush?

Host: Correct!

***Women’s health groups are up in arms at the announcement that all stocks of contraceptive pills will be destroyed. Furthermore, the King has issued orders that effective immediately, any woman seeking to terminate a pregnancy (or possible pregnancy) for any reason is to be placed in a Federal Maternity Care Facility. These facilities are to ensure the health of the mother while she carries the child to full-term. Extensive counselling from on-site chaplains will be available for all expectant mothers.***

Final answer!

Playa: I’ll take “Always Right” for $500 thanks Host

Host: She is always right no matter what John Surname may otherwise claim.

Playa: Who is Magic Bellybutton?

Host: Correct! Yes, not a well known question that one. I’m really impressed you knew it.

Playa: Magic Bellybutton is the shit.

Host: But of course.

Six months later:

In the end, everyone was bent to His will. The King has spoken and those who failed to comply soon found that life was very difficult for them. The world grew very dark. Anyone suspected of non-conformity was labelled Un-Australian and found themselves to be under investigation from Cardinal Pell’s Righteous Rulers Special Service. Many people disappeared and were never seen by their friends for family again.

The King looked over his domain and smiled to himself. Everyone is happy when they have the right morals imposed on them. They come to understand that there is only One Way.

He turned around and went into his bedroom. Now, where did he put that Baby Jesus Butt Plug?

That politics and religion should be separated
(Read the whole debate)

Second negative: John Surname

Sorry this post is late.

You see, last night I was visited by the Ghost Of Christmas Past. He visits every year to teach me the meaning of Christmas, and to also remind about why I should feed the cat. We also talked about how MB stole the premise of her response from the Michael Moore book Stupid White Men. It was so obviously fake. Like God is a woman and emails bloggers.

“Fooooor shaaaaaaame!!” he cried.

Despite what MB wants you to believe, religion and politics have been entwined forever. Since the days of the Egyptians, religious rules have guided the laws, and without question, they have been a smashing success.

The moment that we remove religion from politics, and allow laws to be made for logical instead of moral reasons is the day that we live as animals. If we removed religion from politics unspeakable things would happen:

1. Homosexuals would get rights
Where would we be if a bunch of immoral pillow biters were given the same rights as ordinary humans? We all know that teh gays are out to corrupt us all with their homosexual lifestyle. We know that teh gays want to teach Buggery 101 at primary schools. We know that on average gay people are less moral than normal people. If we allowed them to marry each other, the world would collapse upon itself. It is a ridiculous notion, since they all choose their sexual orientation anyway. They need to be taught how to be straight. It’s a lot more effective than giving them basic human rights.

2. Magazines
Think about how the magazines would feel? If there was no religion, they wouldn’t be able to report on pastors smoking crystal meth and screwing male prostitues. The editors wouldn’t be able to feed their children, who subsequently would starve to death. This would cause a chain famine and the entire world would collapse.

3. Football
Football is a religion to some morons. Politicians pretend to like football in order to get votes. Steve Fielding suggested that Geelong build a giant football, which makes you wonder what the hell he is smoking.

Oh, yeah. Crack.

If you take football out of politics all you will wind up with is a large population of disenchanted bogans who refuse to vote because the politicians won’t connect with them.

So they get carted off to gaol, away from their families. Their children respond badly, and start using drugs to quell the pain. Before long they’re dealing. Then they’re also in gaol. This creates a generational problem in which the entire fabric of society tears and the universe collapses upon itself.

Thus, I submit to you that removing religion from politics would lead to the destruction of the universe.

Thank you.

Got an email last night containing an interesting photograph.

Hi there Mr Editor,

I was at the ANZAC dawn service earlier this year and in between trying to act accordingly at such an event this tosser next to me going by the name of Steve was talking into his camera and recording himself during the last post. He did at least 100 takes and kept mentioning some wankers called Family First. He really pissed me off, and I mean really pissed me off and I was about give him a straight right to the jaw when my mild mannered friend suggested we take a photo of Stevo ruining the sounding of the last post. So we did. I have cut myself out of he photo… but suffice to say the look on my face spoke at least 200 takes.

Of course, Steve Fielding would never do anything like this.

That politics and religion should be separated
(Read the whole debate)

First negative: John Surname

“And God said, let there be light! And Lo, there was. The Lord was very pleased with this new invention, because now he could get a suntan. But he wasn’t finished yet. He knew he would have to find something to fuck up his creation. It was too perfect for the humans he was yet to create. The Lord stood to his full height and thundered “LET THERE BE POLITICIANS!”

Good morning distinguished guests, bloggers and assorted riff-raff. I am John Surname and for the next 600 words I’d like to present the negative side of this debate.

You see, what Magic Bellybutton knows and essentially ignored is that God is the original politician. He is the ultimate politician. You can protest. You can demand a recount. You can even vote for the Greens, but He has declared himself President-For-Life and there ain’t nothin’ you can do about it. Just like John Howard, God believes in the illusion of choice. We can vote Labor, and we can vote Liberal, we can even vote for God’s favourite party, Family First but it doesn’t make any difference as He is still calling the shots as leaders from all parties are too pathetic and lowly to reject Him.

God not only believes in capital punishment, He invented it. If you tried to pull any shit in His time he would smite you with a thunderbolt from the sky. God also invented Homophobia, and hasn’t that one lasted? In fact, many of our laws today derive from His parchment, The Best Little Whorehouse in Sodom (later renamed the Bible).

My esteemed opponent chose to imagine what life would be like if politics were controlled by a fake religion. That is rubbish. Scientology will never be in control as He wouldn’t allow it. Instead of making up fake hypotheticals, let’s see what good religion has done in politics:

1. Tony Abbott.
Tony Abbott is not only one of Australia’s finest politicians, he is one of Australia’s finest men. His loyal devotion to the Lord, and opposition to RU486 (known by God as Satan’s Pill) has earned him a special place in Heaven. The Lord believes that we should all strive to be more like Tony Abbott, and less like 50 Cent.

2. The Crusades.
Although the Crusades weren’t always successful, the Lord thought they were awesome and absolutely supported their aims. Even though they never took back the Holy Lands, the Crusaders got the last laugh as they are in Heaven, and the Muslims, like all Muslims, are burning in Hell.

3. The Iraq War
The Iraq War was an excellent piece of foreign policy that tops the achievements of the glorious Bush Administration. Bush has been reported as saying that God told him to do it. My source tells me this is entirely true.

4. Family First.
The Lord thinks Family First are, quote, “Lyk totally genius man!”. His favourite part is the clever way they hide their religious beliefs under the banner of “families”. God thinks this is hilarious because He doesn’t give a shit about families, Hell, he even allowed his own son to die. The truth of the matter is, Family First are a prank played on us by Steve Fielding (in consultation with God). I mean, how to do you think Steve Fielding wound up in the Senate? You can’t tell me there wasn’t more than a little divine intervention there!

In concluding, it frankly doesn’t matter what you do or who you vote for, as the moral standards He set down thousands of years ago still govern our lives today. He is President-For-Life and will remain so until the Sun swallows the Earth is a spectacular lightshow that we will all miss, but he will enjoy quite thoroughly.

Election 2007 kicked off for me at 5am on Saturday morning with a day of election filmmaking duties ahead, and finished up nearly 24 hours later when I collapsed into bed in a reasonable state of inebriation and exhaustion. I would’ve had roughly the same itinerary if there was a Liberal victory although the Great Ruddslide ‘07 made the day one of immense joy and jubilation. Bridgit Gread has already written a brilliant wrap of the RWDB reaction to Australia Decides ‘07 so here’s the rest as seen through GrodsCorp’s eyes.

Summary
Everyone knows what happened thanks to tonnes of proper election analysis in the MSM and the blogosphere so I might just mention a single point that especially makes me smile: Family First have gone from strength-to-strength with their national primary vote climbing -0.04% to the massive total of 1.97%, while their nemesis, the “extreme” Greens, grew their vote by 0.4% to 7.59%.

Suck shit, Steve Fielding. There’s now absolutely no doubt that once that stain on democracy is removed from the Senate in 2010 we’ll never have Family First make either chamber look untidy again.

How the candidates went
Let’s check out those aspiring politicians to whom GrodsCorp paid attention during the campaign (all figures are from AEC website at 5:50pm, 26 November 2007.)

Stuart Ulrich, independent for Charlton, scored 2.29% of the primary vote which he can partly attribute to scoring first place on the ballet (sic) paper. (Read this if you want to understand the “ballet” joke.) Still a not-totally-shite result despite the donkey vote.

Jemma Tribe, Family First for Cunningham, polled half a percentage point less than her party’s national average with 1.48% of the primary vote. If she was Steve Fielding, and with numbers like that, she’d be sitting in Parliament right now.

Stewart Glass, independent for the Senate in South Australia, has built a solid base for another tilt in 2010 with 65 votes, or 0.01% of the primary vote. Maybe his campaign was a hammer and the election was a wood screw? (As John Surname said when he saw Stewart’s YouTube video: “Buy a screwdriver.”)

Zane Alcorn (AKA MC Doc Fruit), Socialist Alliance for Wills, scored 0.73% of the primary; Margarita Windisch, Socialist Alliance for the Senate in Victoria, managed 0.08%.

Philip Nitschke, independent for Menzies, gathered a respectable 3.91% of the primary vote in a blue-ribbon Liberal seat against the (ex) minister for immigration, Kevin Andrews. Here’s hoping he can boost that percentage up to 4% with absentees and postals to get his deposit back.

Lachlan Connor
Look, I’ll be honest with you. We were all ready to shoot two episodes of Lachlan Connor, Independent during the GrodsElectionParty but when things started to go oh-so-right we started to get oh-so-drunk. There was no chance that we were going to tear ourselves away from the telly long enough to turn the camera on, and even if we did get the camera turned on we probably would’ve pointed it the wrong way and forgot to put a tape in. So Lachlan will appear in an epilogue episode this week and that’ll have to do.

Disgraceful behaviour
Some of you may be aware of the allegation that Kevin Andrews tore down the posters of an opposing candidate on election day. Andrew denies that he committed this offence with a spokesperson from his office saying, “It’s not true, it’s absolute rubbish.” Well, I can say that I was rather closely involved with the whole incident on Saturday and I have no choice but to declare that Kevin Andrews is a lying liar who lies.

The Liberal Party
Decimated. Pure and simple. I hope with every fibre of my being that Tony Abbott is elected leader so that it implodes just a little bit more.

In conclusion
John Howard, you are a national embarrassment. May you never have another chance to fuck this country up in any capacity ever again. Good riddance.

After a tip-off from Grendel, I have sent the following email to Steve Fielding.

To: senator.fielding@aph.gov.au
From: The Editor
Subject: Coat Of Arms

Dear Senator Fielding,

I notice that you display the Commonwealth Coat Of Arms on your personal webpage, www.stevefielding.com. Can you tell me if this is in compliance with the Trade Practices Act and the Trade Marks Act?

“The Commonwealth Coat of Arms is the pre-eminent mark of Commonwealth authority, power and function. Its use, with a few limited exceptions, is limited to the Commonwealth Parliament, the Australian Government and the Federal Courts. The Arms are not in the public domain.”

“Permission to use the Commonwealth Coat of Arms in other than the context of denoting Commonwealth authority and property, is granted by this department, on a case by case basis, but usually in only two circumstances, to sporting teams representing Australia in international competition, and for educational purposes.”

“Use of the Commonwealth Coat of Arms without permission may be in breach of sections 53 (c) and (d) of the Trade Practices Act 1974, Section 145.1 of the Criminal Code Act 1995 or Section 39 (2) of the Trade Marks Act 1995.”

Regards,
The Editor

Steve Fielding’s latest Uncle Arthur-style home movie is up on his website, and its good to have a new dose of his folksy, self-shot stupidness to focus our minds a week out from the election.

In this installment of Uncle Steve’s home movies we meet a mother holding a baby who has been doorknocked by Fielding in suburban Melbourne and, magically, agrees with everything he says. Reduction in petrol tax? Yep. Increase in baby bonus for third child? Yep. You see, it’s all about “families”, or “for the little one’s future” as the doorknockee says.

However, I can’t help but wonder what the poor lady would’ve said if Steve was upfront about Family First’s real policy agenda. Total abolition of women’s right to choose to have an abortion? Ummm. Ostracism of homosexual people? Ummm. Creationism taught in schools? Ummm. Total alignment of Australian public policy with the values of the Pentecostal Church? Ummm.

I can’t tell you how much I hope Steve knocks on my door next week.

The location choice for yesterday’s Family First campaign launch has been explained.

Senator Fielding launched Family First’s campaign from an abandoned petrol station at Lower Templestowe yesterday to emphasise the party’s key election policy of a 10-cent cut in petrol taxes.

(I still fail to see the connection between an abandoned service station and the cost of petrol tax, but anyway…)

Fielding reckons that the Pentecostal Church party’s policy of a 10c per litre reduction in petrol tax to ease the “burden” on families would cost $2.8 billion.

In a completely unrelated statement, Steve Fielding called The Greens “economically reckless.”

So that’s what it was.

Family First leader Steve Fielding has told the party’s campaign launch in Melbourne that a vote for Family First is a vote for common sense and balance in Parliament.
(source)

I was driving down Manningham Rd in Lower Templestowe today and saw a huge group of people standing around in white Family First t-shirts with Family First balloons and a trailer decked out with Family First posters. Steve Fielding was prominent in the group. But here’s the thing — this whole thing was going on in the forecourt of an abandoned service station! What kind of point were they trying to make with that choice of location? Something about the impact of petrol cartels?

Try as I might, I can’t find any kind of God connection, although there was some guy standing up the back wearing a long flowing robes, crown of thorns, and a luxurious beard…

Steve Fielding being a dick just now on ABC’s Insiders, jousting with the leaders of the Democrats and the Greens. He trotted out all the usual quotes about how evil the Greens are, including my personal favourite: “free heroin”. Fielding crapped on about petrol prices, grocery prices and bank fees, firmly positioning his “party” (let’s be honest about his “party” — it consists of one Parliamentary representative representing 1.88% of Victorians) as the consumer affairs micro party. Surprisingly, he only said the word “family” twice (excluding when he said his Party name) in contrast to Kevin Rudd’s now ad nauseum chanting of the “family” mantra. So maybe Steve Fielding should get in touch with the AEC and lodge an application to change his micro party’s name to the Today Tonight Party.

It was also revealed on Insiders that Family First in Queensland having been discussing a preference deal with Pauline Hanson which raises a very interesting question: is Pauline Hanson a Pentecostal?

And in a non-Steve Fielding aside about Insiders, Piers Ackerman said the Kyoto Protocol was “so 1990s” which was hilarious in the context of the 1970s haircut, shirt and jacket that cloaked his toad-like body.

Come and get me, laydeez

Slipheed yesterday alerted me to News Ltd’s Vote-a-matic calculator. I was going to post about its uselessness, limitations and general silliness but Jeremy and John Surname beat me to it. So I’ll stick to posting my results…

… and pointing out how ridiculous the minor Party leaders’ faces look in the screenshots chosen by the News Ltd. nerds who coded the calculator. Bob Brown looks like a paedophile, Steve Fielding looks like he’s taking a poo, and Lyn Allison looks like a man.

(And by the way, how the fuck does Steve Fielding deserve a place in that lineup representing nothing more than 1.9% of the total Victorian vote? Where’s the Citizens’ Electoral Council?)