Steve Fielding, Pat Field, and a handy recipe for bumpkin scones ...

(Steve Fielding: acting out the role of a bottle).

Election time is certainly drawing near, because it's time for what ornithologists know as a feather display, but ordinary bird watchers tell us is the 'look at me, look at me' dickheadus horribulus sound of desperate politicians squawking to the faithful.

And who better than Steve Fielding to show the rest of the flock how to squawk?

Elected to the Senate on the strength of an egregious Labor error - oh how they and we have paid for their stupidity - Fielding's recent comments on women rorting welfare by way of late term abortion managed to attract even the ire of Christopher Pyne:

Senior Liberal Christopher Pyne said Senator Fielding's position defied logic because welfare recipients were not eligible for the scheme.

"That points to an attempt to gain attention to his political campaign for re-election."

Fielding compounded the error by saying that other Senators had said it first - a rough equivalent to saying Hitler said something first so it must be okay - but then couldn't come up with any actual names. (Others said it first: Fielding defends abortion loophole remarks).

Okay, another penny in the Godwin's Law swear jar, but when even Barners thinks Fielding's gone too far, well then clearly Fielding's gone way too far. And Barnaby Joyce didn't mince his words, like a cow going through a regional abattoir, calling Fielding a minor pawn playing politics in the most base way.

Naturally this makes Fielding eminently suited to scribble a column for The Punch, Australia's dumbest, punch drunk conversation, and so you can read the intimate record of the Senator's thoughts in Parental leave scheme treats mothers like criminals.

There's no need to actually read the column, so much as experience a warm fuzzy glow that it's there thanks to Chairman Rupert's team of hard hitting bloggers.

The good news is that Fielding's term expires next June, and he can only make it back if the citizens of Victoria experience a collective fit of insanity. Yes, Victorians we're looking at you. This time you won't be able to blame the arcane stupidity of Labor's clever dick preferencing system.

Meanwhile, Fielding is likely to tip the balance regarding the structural separation of Telstra, the one sensible government initiative in recent times in the area of communications, remedying a fault that should have been fixed back in the days when it was first privatised.

About the only good thing about Fielding's foray into kicking the abortion can is the reaction it's produced on all sides of the fence.

Fielding's ineptness reminds me of Albert Patrick Field, an Australian French polisher who was given the nod to become a Senator by Joh Bjelke-Petersen as part of the political manoeuvring to bring down the Whitlam government. It led to one of Gough's better if cruel lines: "an individual of the utmost obscurity, from which he rose and to which he sank with equal speed".

Is there something in the way that Field and Fielding both share agricultural patronyms?

As usual, the wiki links to some nice memories, including the collected wisdom of Albert Field, as revealed in a Four Corners program dedicated to the seventies:

PETER ROSS: What are the things you feel strongly about, Senator?

ALBERT FIELD: Oh, homosexuality. Incest. Uh -- abortion. And pornographic literature.

PETER ROSS: So what causes you to have strong feelings about these things?

ALBERT FIELD: Because I dislike it -- really dislike it. I don't think it should be ever brought up in the House of Parliament. House of Parliament is meant for better things than that.

Eureka, I've worked it out. I was never big on the theory of reincarnation and all that, but surely Steve Fielding is the reincarnation, the spitting mental image of a Queensland French polisher.

PETER ROSS: What are the things you enjoy doing in your own private life?

ALBERT FIELD: Ooh, dancing. Soccer. I used to do a lot of ice-skating and rollerskating. But dancing, I would say, would be my best hobby.

Well according to his wiki, Steve Fielding was once in the scouts. Does that count?

PETER ROSS: Yes. Do you consider yourself a modern man? I mean, with it and understanding things?

ALBERT FIELD: Oh, yes. I always maintain you're as young as you feel. And I feel young enough.

PETER ROSS: What are the things that you read and listen to and the movies you go to?

ALBERT FIELD: Well, I did go to movies a few times, but I walked out because they were so disgusting.

PETER ROSS: What was disgusting about them?

ALBERT FIELD: Oh, well, men in the nude, bathing in the nude, and, uh -- playing leapfrog over each other.

PETER ROSS: What? That was the film you saw? Why did you see it in the first place?

ALBERT FIELD: I didn't know it was like that, And I found out. We walked out anyhow.

PETER ROSS: Yes. What? That offended you?

ALBERT FIELD: It did. Yes.

PETER ROSS: What about your reading though?

ALBERT FIELD: Ooh, I read western yarns. I like 'em. And, um -- sometimes I read, um -- ..political books, you know, about -- Oh, I read books about the Mafia. 'Mafia' they call it. And somebody give me Karl Marx to read, but I wouldn't read it. It was too deep for me. (Four Corners Reflections from the Seventies).

Second thoughts, Albert is a pretty advanced thinker. My, my, lordie lordie, didn't Bjelke Petersen show his deep love for the democratic process. Poor old Gough. And yes even back then clever dick socialists at the ABC were mocking decent ordinary Australians with a taste for westerns.

Well the good news is that Fielding is likely soon enough to shuffle off to Buffalo, just like Bert, and we need never think of him again, until the latte sippers roll out a show nostalgically titled Memories of the brain dead Noughties.

Well it's about time, because we need some new minor party clown in the Senate to make life interesting. According to Antony Green, beancounter and Enmore celebrity, Fielding would lose his seat in Victoria in any decently staged coming election, but Family First is handily poised to pick up the final seat in South Australia.

Come on crow eaters, you can do it, make our day, make our year in politics (here).

Perhaps the mid-staters could disinter Flo Bjelke Petersen's spirit and put her into a new deep south seat so that the tradition of pumpkin scones can continue.

Australia, you're standing in it.

Yes, that bloody cow pat. Sheesh, can't you inner city types understand anything about the land ...

And now instead of the usual literary wanker reading we sometimes append to these scribbles, here, thanks to the ABC Queensland, is Flo's famous recipe for pumpkin scones:

Degree of difficulty: Low

Oh dear lord, can't the Ultimo bunker mob ever stop mocking ordinary decent Australians?

Here it is:

You need:
1 Tblsp butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 cup mashed pumpkin (cold)
2 cups Self raising flour

Method:
Beat together butter, sugar and salt with electric mixer.
Add egg, then pumpkin and stir in the flour.
Turn on to floured board and cut.
Place in tray on top shelf of very hot oven 225-250c for 15-20 minutes.

Oh okay and a little bit of a song from some Adelaide boys:

Went down to Wantirna South
Where Renoir paints the walls
Described you clearly
But the sky began to fall

Am I ever gonna see your face again
Am I ever gonna see your face again

Trams, cars and taxis
Little waxworks on the move
Carry Victorian voters past me
But none of them are you

Can't stop the memory
That goes climbing through my brain
I get no answers
So the questions still remains

Am I ever gonna see you in a bottle again
Am I ever gonna see you in a bottle again

(Below: yes, you are, here's Steve Fielding in a bottle again).