Crikey

A couple of nights ago Susan went out to the shops so I got on MSN and had a chat with Barnaby. I have to wait for Susan to leave the house because I’m banned from MSN after I gave Susan’s credit card details to that nice man from Nigeria who needed help moving money. I would’ve given him my credit card details except Susan banned me from having a credit card last year after I emailed the details to another nice man from Nigeria who needed help moving money.

Anyway, I was chatting to Barnaby and we got talking about the election.

“What is the family 1st election slogan?” asked Barnaby.

“Slogan?” I replied.

“Like a sentence to sum up what u stand for. Labour’s is ‘Moving Forward’,” he explained.

“Oh right well I’m not 2 sure,” I admitted. “How do u come up with a slogan?”

“Usually u do some focus groups and stuff.”

“Have you got any ideas for a slogan?” I asked.

“How about this?” answered Barnaby, including a link to a YouTube video.

When I was halfway through watching the video that Barnaby sent me, Susan walked in the front door and I panicked and turned the computer off and quickly sat at the kitchen table with a magazine, doing my best to look engrossed by squinting my eyes and sucking on the end of a pen.

“Hi, everyone,” called Susan.

“Dad was on MSN,” said my son casually.

“Liar! I was not!” I shouted, shooting him a dirty look and mouthing dobbers wear nappies.

Two days later, after my 24-hour grounding had expired, I called up Nick Xzennophone to find out more about focus groups.

“It’s when you pay ordinary people, like folk on the street, to give you their opinions about the ideas you have for something, in this case a slogan,” he explained.

“But I’ve only got one idea! Can you help me with another one?” I pleaded.

“Well,” he said, “Labour says that a vote for them is moving forward and a vote for the coalition is moving backwards. Which way do you reckon you’re moving?”

“I’d like to think of my role in politics as a balance between two extremes — someone who looks at all of the both sides of the story,” I said. “So if I’m in between forwards and backwards I guess I’m moving nowhere.”

“Hmmm, ‘Moving Nowhere’,” pondered Nick. It’s almost perfect but it doesn’t sound quite right. How about ‘Going Nowhere’?”

“Family First: Going Nowhere,” I said slowly, testing the sound of the words. “I think I like it, but maybe it needs to be a touch more ephmat … enphati … empathised.”

“OK,” said Nick, thinking, “how about, ‘Family First: Going Absolutely Nowhere’?”

“Perfect!” I exclaimed. “Brilliant! Now, how much do focal group people normally get paid?”

All I could find in Susan’s purse was $150 so I could only afford to focal group three people. First I went down to the nice lady at the servo who gives me a discount on Chicken Heroes. I showed her the two slogans that I’d printed professionally on sheets of A4 paper in Comic Sand bold and asked her which one she liked better.

“The first one, dear,” she said.

“Why’s that?”

“The second one sounds a bit negative. Going nowhere makes me think of standing still which is not really making much progress, is it?”

“I guess not,” I conceded.

Next I went to see the dry cleaning man who did a superb job of getting all that strawberry jam out of the bottle suit. He also liked the first one.

“Is there anything at all you like about the second one?” I asked. “It’s sort of my favourite.”

“Not really, Stuart,” he said. “I feel like the country’s been going nowhere for the past three years so I’d like it to go somewhere now.”

“Steve,” I reminded him.

“Who?”

Lastly, I dropped in to see my pastor who is a very wise man. I asked him to select his favourite slogan from the two choices but only showed him the second hoping he’d just like that one.

“Where is the other one, Steve?” he asked.

“What other one?” I dodged.

“You said that there was a choice between two. Where is the other choice?”

“Oh, here it is,” I fumbled with the papers, pretending to suddenly find the missing one.

“Definitely that one, my son,” the pastor said, nodding. “It reminds me of faith which suggests to me that you’re a party of God, and the other one about going nowhere is terrible. Very negative.”

Walking home I felt a bit forlorn because I really, really like ‘Family First: Going Absolutely Nowhere’, but I could see the value in focal grouping because it makes you see that other people have opinions, too — even if they are a bit stupid — and if there are more other opinions than your own opinion then maybe all the other opinions are right and yours is wrong. In my time as a Senator I’ve learned that democracy is about respecting all opinions no matter how wrong they are and respecting the will of the people.

So, when I got home I gave in to public opinion, sat down at my desk, sharpened a crayon, and started drafting my first press release of the election campaign:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

STEVE FIELDING UNVAILS ELECTION SLOGAN — ‘FAMILY FIST: NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP’

Until next time.

Follow Fake Steve Fielding on Twitter: @FakeFielding.