Early Life
Fielding was born on 17 October 1960, in the Australian state capital of 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, while for his secondary education he 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 Maths, 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 the 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. He completed his degree in 1992, and this led him to move 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 upon his return he worked for United Energy, the Australian Yellow Pages, and as a marketing manager at Vision Super.
His first foray into politics came in 2003 when he successfully stood as an Independent candidate for the Knox City Council. Fielding 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, claim that 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 prior to joining Family First.
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“... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,—if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)