Senator Fielding: why do it?

Senator Fielding won his seat in the Federal Senate with less than 2% of the popular vote in the 2004 Election. He relied heavily on preferences from numerous parties to get across the line. During his first term he was fairly invisible as far as his public profile is concerned.  The Howard Government held the majority in both houses and only needed his support on a few occasions.  It wasn't until after the 2007 election that he came to real prominence due to his balance of power position along with Senator Nick Xenophon and 5 from the Greens. Even then he hasn't been as smart a politician as his first term colleague, Xenophon, who held the Government to ransom to get more for his State out of the Stimulus package.

Sen. Fielding recently announced, after a bungled interview where he misspelt the word FISCAL, that he has suffered from a learning difficulty. Now at the time of the Rudd Governments apology to the forgotten people Fielding announced that he was the victim sexual abuse as a child.

Now the purpose of my blog is not to suggest that Senator Fielding is exploiting these two events (the first terribly unfortunate and the second horrific) for political purposes. I find that the abuse he suffered is abhorrent and should not be forced upon any child. Listening to his interview with Neil Mitchell on 3AW you can really feel the emotion and hurt that he feels. If he is to be believed, and I have no reason not too, he did not intend on revealing this fact but the emotion overcame him.

But is Senator Fielding revealing these very personal demons for no good reason. I don't think he has a good enough grip on his own emotions to be an advocate for victims or perhaps I am wrong. I don't however believe that this will catapult him to victory at the next election. Senator Fielding may act now as a beacon for other victims to either come forward to the police, as Fielding has done, or talk to someone about it. This can only be seen as a good thing. However, from listening to him speak about the issue, he is clearly not in a good place in terms of dealing with this. Is the national political stage really the best place to be talking about this under these circumstances.

I hope that some of the Forgotten People take some solace from Senator Fielding's revelations but I don't know that his recent revelations will do much to keep him in the Senate chamber. I only hope they help heal this sore wound or else it will have been done for no good reason.