Steven Fielding (born 17 October 1960) is a former Australian senator for the state of Victoria and the former federal parliamentary leader of the Family First Party. He was elected to the upper house at the 2004 federal election on two per cent of the first-preference votes. He failed to gain re-election at the 2010 federal election. His term ended on 30 June 2011. Early life Fielding was born on 17 October 1960, in Melbourne, where he was raised in the suburb of Reservoir. His parents, Shirley and George Fielding, had a large family consisting of 16 children, and Fielding spent much of his childhood sharing a bedroom with five brothers in the family's three-bedroom home. His early education was at the local Keon Park Primary School, He later attended the nearby Merrilands High School. Academically, Fielding suffered setbacks through an undiagnosed case of dyslexia, and this led to problems studying subjects such as English. Nevertheless, he excelled in mathematics, and his high marks in this subject allowed him to graduate with sufficiently high scores to gain entry into the Bachelor of Engineering degree at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), where he studied electronic engineering. Upon graduating in 1983, Fielding accepted a position at Hewlett-Packard, and later he moved into management at technology firms NEC and Siemens. Fielding returned to university to undertake a Master of Business Administration (MBA) at Monash University, completing it in 1992. He later moved to Wellington, New Zealand, where he worked for Telecom New Zealand in "change management" during a difficult time for the industry, as it was undergoing deregulation. He returned to Australia three years later, in 1995, and worked for United Energy, the Australian Yellow Pages and as a marketing manager at Vision Super. Fielding entered politics in 2003 when he successfully stood as an independent candidate for the Knox City Council. He has described the decision to stand as "very last-minute", but others, such as the mayor of the council, Jenny Moore, and then Victorian Labor MP Peter Lockwood, said Fielding was very open about his intent to move into federal politics. Either way, both Lockwood and Labor MP Bob Stensholt have described how Fielding later made inquiries about the possibility of running for one of the major parties before joining Family First. 2004 election Fielding was elected to represent Victoria in the Senate at the 2004 federal election. He was