Glenn Milne: Family First finds its wings

Glenn Milne: Family First finds its wings

The Australian - Sydney,Australia
The fledgling party is making an impressive bid for power and influence across the country

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June 26, 2006

A QUIET anniversary will pass this week, but one that should be noted by both sides of politics.

Come Saturday it will be a year since Steve Fielding took his place in the Senate, the first Family First politician to win a seat in the federal parliament. Prior to Fielding's election from Victoria no one much had heard of this new political force.

The party was founded in 2002 by a Pentecostal pastor from Adelaide, Andrew Evans, with the declared aim of promoting the interests of Australian families. Evans had a seat in the South Australian parliament, but 2004 was the first time the party contested a federal election. In Victoria, particularly, it was expected to sink pretty much without trace. In fact Fielding floated to the surface, though it was a rising not of his own making.

Only 56,376 Victorians marked him first on the upper house ballot paper, giving him little more than one-tenth of a Senate quota. His victory was essentially due to the arcane workings of the Senate's proportional representation system and to a fundamental miscalculation by the Victorian ALP's head office whose above-the-line preference flows went disastrously awry.

Labor's vote slumped, they lost a sitting senator, Jacinta Collins, and the preference flows from both major and minor parties surged to Family First. Fielding found himself in the Senate sharing the balance of power with maverick National Party senator Barnaby Joyce.

For Family First, and the evangelical Christian churches that backed the party, Fielding was a sudden and accidental hero.

So much so that Jane Cadzow, writing in The Good Weekend magazine, likened Fielding to the movie Mr Smith Goes to Washington. That's the one where a young Jimmy Stewart stars. Smith was described by Cadzow as "a guileless, decent fellow plucked from obscurity to fill a vacancy in the US Senate". Cadzow went on: "Like Mr Smith, Fielding radiates sincerity. Like Mr Smith, he seems to have landed in the legislature by chance. 'I never thought I'd be a politician, I can tell you,' he says."

Well, one year later you can forget all that. Fielding has turned into a canny and hard-nosed political campaigner with a sure feel for what the broader Australian community sees as its core interests.

And you can also forget a few other notions, too, among them that Fielding and his party are exclusively driven by the concerns of the evangelical Christian base from which he has sprung. And that they are amateurs; a political anomaly that will disappear at the 2007 election, a bunch of oncers.

In fact, Fielding and his South Australian-based federal president, Peter Harris, have spent the past year capitalising on Fielding's prominence to begin building the basis of a professional political machine, right under the noses of the big parties.

What's not widely known is that Fielding was not a lone contender for office in 2004. Family First actually ran 112 candidates nationally. The party ran full-blown campaigns in Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania. John Howard, always wary, post-Pauline Hanson, of threats to his base from what he saw as other right-wing parties, made sure he dealt with Family First personally in the rundown to the election to smooth the way for preference swaps.

Labor ignored them to their detriment. But the development of Family First as a political power has gathered pace over the past year. The party already has two elected members in the South Australian parliament. Using Fielding's new-found profile they are expanding their formal structure nationally.

Family First is now registered in Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia as a state entity. The same process is now under way in Victoria. Harris, after the manner of the big parties, won't divulge how many members they have, but it's clear the membership is only going one way: up.

An analysis of the mountain of mail that floods Fielding's office suggests he has the ability to pull votes from Labor and the Coalition.

"We're hopeful at the next election," says one senior Family First figure. "We're the underdogs but our profile is now much higher. People are realising that we're going to be around for a long time. They are starting to contact us."

And Family First is starting to contact them as well. Bob Katter, the former National MP and now federal Independent, tends his far north Queensland seat of Kennedy like a sheep dog. He's noted the presence of Family First on his patch and now sees them as a real threat to the Nationals in the Senate.

Family First refuses to confirm or deny its presence, but Katter says Fielding's lieutenants have been in Queensland putting out preference swap feelers to the New Country Party, fishing industry groups, and various producer groups in the sugar and cattle industries.

Katter points out that fishing industry Senate candidates sent 60,000 preference votes the Nationals way at the last election. Family First clearly wants those votes the next time around. And they may get them.

Katter says Fielding's operatives have the perfect pitch, arguing stand for "family businesses" against the big conglomerates such as Woolworths and Coles. Katter cites figures provided to him by the Motor Traders Association last week showing the big retailers already have 62 per cent of the petrol market, with that share headed to 75 per cent.

Is it any surprise then that Fielding is back in Canberra, a lone voice, demanding a 10 cents a litre cut in petrol taxes?

"That would have relevance to the entire wheat and sugar industries," Katter says. "Fielding's got credibility. He's a smart bastard. He's touting himself as the family business party. He'll tap into ground formerly held by the Democrats who don't like big corporations either. And on industrial relations as well. If they (voters) don't want to go to Labor where do they go? One Nation doesn't exist any more."

The subtext to Katter's "Democrat" assessment is that Fielding has confounded the critics who simply tried to box him up as a right-wing "happy clapper". He's opposed to the war in Iraq. He wants Australia to sign the Kyoto Protocol. He voted against the sale of Telstra and pushed Howard towards a more compassionate approach to asylum-seekers. Howard sought his face-to-face views on the Government's recent crackdown on internet porn and on his industrial relations reforms because he desperately wanted them to be endorsed by Fielding as "family friendly".

Yet Fielding still has doubts about the impact of Work Choices on public holidays, meal breaks and overtime. And, oh yes, Howard last week agreed to a Senate inquiry into petrol prices, Fielding's big issue at the moment. There's no doubt that faced with Joyce's unreliability, Howard knows Fielding's vote is one he may still need. Don't think the Prime Minister's position on the ACT's gay marriage legislation wasn't executed with one eye on Family First voters.

One year on, Fielding and Family First have arrived. No more Mr Smith.