True crime author, Tony Reeves addressed a packed meeting of West End’s 17 Group last week with new evidence in the Whiskey Au Go Go fire bombing. The 1973 fire bombing murdered 15 people and Mr Reeve’s new evidence implicates police, clears John Andrew Stuart who died in Boggo Rd jail while serving time for the crime and identifies a person of interest.

The manuscript is under consideration by the Queensland University Press and pending legal clearance may be released in time for Christmas.

Due to the reclassification of the Fitzgerald Inquiry documents last year, much of the evidence in this case has been locked up for another 65 years.

Readers interested in more information should let the Westender know via the comments form below as it may be possible to provide extracts of the book once a publishing deal is in place.

Having despatched the Red Queen and beheaded her guards, the Cheshire Cat grinned hideously, “No-one plays fair if they think they can get away with it. That’s a lesson you’ll have to learn.”

The bolt of adrenaline hit as the ABC unofficially announced that Kevin Rudd had the numbers.

I finished reworking the cover photo of my campaign page in seconds and started slashing the press release I had prepared earlier. The familiar flood of heat in my palms was unmistakeable. Adrenaline.

“We’re on”, I muttered.

The surreal high drama of the back-stabbing back of Julia Gillard merged seamlessly with the real-politik of running an election campaign. Rules become guidelines, your focus narrows, you move forward in a tunnel, one step at a time. Lists and practice are the only saviours for surviving extended periods high on adrenaline – and lots of nanna naps.

KRudd’s disdain for the rules of engagement had been brought home a month earlier during Brisbane’s Greek Festival Paniyiri in Musgrave Park, site of the Aboriginal Tent embassy, smack bang in the middle of West End, where the Green vote tops 30%  and the gutted infrastructure of Labor’s union past is gradually replaced by apartments in what will be Australia’s most densely populated suburb.

Kevin ignored the invitation to address a special session at 10:30 and turned up late, personal media crew in tow, crashed the VIP formalities using a minder with an extra chair to secure his place and challenged Premier Newman to a Zorba dancing contest from the podium, displacing ALP member for Moreton and Gillard’s official representative at the function, Graeme Perret, in the process.

Down in the crowd, handing out my pamphlets one by one, the hero worship was palpable. The crowd lapped up Krudd’s well worn platitudes about the ethnic community’s love of family and music. They laughed as if they had never heard the joke before when he thanked them for saving Australia from the penury of English and Irish cuisine with fetta cheese, spinach and the olive.

Upstaged, outclassed and on the wrong side of the river, Premier Newman briefly withstood the boos, the sullen silence and the turned backs of the crowd as it moved onto other things. He cut short his speech. KRudd, campaign machine, had swept the field, again.

How do The Greens, earnestly trying to engage the public in a debate about energy descent and the end of unbridled affluence, meet populist, rock-star campaigning of this ilk?

KRudd smiles like the Cheshire Cat as he sets the executioner arguing with the King over how to behead a head without a body. The ALP has struggled to get a grip on this slithering tove for the last three years. Now it is my turn.

Of course, the answer lies somewhere in the rumbles and grumbles of discontent from within the ALP. The question is how to capture and synthesise that discontent into the three word quote that cuts through.

Within seconds of posting the Game of Thrones inspired quote “He burned his party to the ground so he might rule the ashes” over Rudd’s visage as the cover of my campaign page, I had responses from Games of Thrones fans, rusted on ALP friends, branch members in Melbourne for the Young Greens conference and an  old school friend I had not spoken to in two decades.

“My sister is rapt that your are running against KRudd and wants to donate to your campaign. Send me the account details.”

It was still only one hour after he had been announced as leader of the ALP and was officially only the Prime-Minister elect.

That discontent, and the financial and physical support that flows from it, adds weight to the campaign. But it only builds it arithmetically – a couple of percent at a time. This is the way we have built The Greens over the last two decades: a percentage point here, two percentage points there, a sudden lift of five percent. In the seat of Griffith we now average 16 percent, ranging from 30% in the Green West, to 7% in the conservative north-east and south-eastern corners. We have doubled the vote in each election bar one over the last four federal elections but that is from a small base.

We need a real game-changer to wean the electorate from fossil fuels, from unfettered economic growth and the unnatural advantages of a tiny population harvesting the resources of an entire continent in an overcrowded world. They don’t want to vote for The Greens in case we have them all hold hands and sing whale songs.

I reread chapter 8 of Alice through the looking glass, pondering the metaphor of the Cheshire cat. The book ends with the cards blowing away in the wind, waking Alice, who finds herself batting away dry leaves in an Autumn breeze.

And it dawns on me.

In a twist worthy of the Cat himself, KRudd himself is my secret weapon in the battle against him. His insistence on style over substance, populism over principle and the quick grab encapsulate the hollowing out of the ALP that is the cause of the rumbles, grumbles and desertions.

The party faithful have endured the gradual decline over the last three decades believing that it was all for something, that this was a journey on the way to somewhere and that the destination had something to do with the party’s principled past. KRudd’s antics in the last three years have proven that this is not the case. It is simply about power and now everyone can see it. The emperor has no clothes.

The tearing down of the union headquarters along Peel St, West End to make way for 20 storey apartment blocks is the embodiment of this decay. From protecting workers’ rights, to supporting the aspirational middle class, to the naked embracing of economic growth to underwrite the social contract: the ALP has lost its soul.

It took decades to build the ALP from a shearer’s strike that encapsulated an emerging global movement into a political organisation that could govern to protect workers against the opportunistic pillaging by owners of capital. A century later, the organisation is all that is left.

It is now two decades since Bob Brown entered the Senate, and The Greens are steadily building a political organisation to take on the responsibility of nurturing those finite resources against the opportunistic pillaging of capital. This is the century of a resource constrained economy.

The challenge for The Greens has been to make the transition from the meaning of Labor obvious. KRudd has provided the necessary spotlight.

His behaviour starkly highlights the irrelevance of the principles he purports to espouse. The real problems of the day are to find dignity and social wellbeing in a stable economy. That means we have to stop chasing economic growth and start to build long term infrastructure that is going to last. We have to recognise that we are on the path of energy descent and if we don’t start taking this into account we are going to run out of petrol on the highway 1500 kilometres from home.

KRudd is the proof of what is currently wrong with Australian politics. He is the fruiting body of the fungus that has worked its roots into the core of the political process. The campaign for Griffith is the opportunity for the electorate to let the parties stuck in last century know that the status quo is not acceptable.

The future must be different. The future is Green.

Queensland Kids announces this week that it is a step closer to construction of Hummingbird House children’s hospice in Brisbane after securing a significant funding commitment from the Queensland Government and Federal Coalition.

The commitment of $5.5 million by the Queensland Government over seven years is in response to the recent State parliamentary inquiry recommendations regarding palliative care services in Queensland. The Federal Opposition has offered to match this funding if elected to Government this year. Greens candidate for Griffith has submitted the costing to the Australian Greens for consideration at part of the party’s submission to the Parliamentary Budget Office.

These funding commitments will go towards the $22.6 million forecast for the construction over 2 years and the first 5 years of operation of Hummingbird House. The balance of funding will be sourced from corporate and private donors. We are yet to receive a Federal funding commitment from the current Federal government.

Currently, there are only two children’s hospices in Australia, with none being in Queensland. Queensland families are suffering under immense emotional and financial strain caring for their ill children with limited local services.

Hummingbird House will be Queensland’s only children’s hospice, servicing a critical need for respite and care for children with a life limiting illness to complement Queensland’s existing hospital based services.The establishment of Hummingbird House also offers an alternative for families whose children require end-of-life care.

Queensland Kids co-founders,Paul and Gabrielle Quilliam have drawn praise

Hummingbird house offers hope to parents of critically ill kids

from Hummingbird House Chairman John Hummelstad. ‘The Board is proud to celebrate this important milestone with Paul and Gabrielle, who have worked tirelessly for over two years to make this project a reality.’

Marco Renai snaps a shot while running a 60 second triathlon at Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre

Business needs to embrace mobile media, a panel of experts at the COSBOA conference in Southbank told local businesses today.

 Owner of Gold Coast fitness clinic, Marco Renai, stole the show with a 60 second triathlon involving the entire audience that he photographed and posted to facebook during the session. He clinched the sympathy of the audience with his short video outlining the work a group of Gold Coast business men in helping homeless teenage boys get their lives back on track.

Marco’s presentation illustrated nicely the assertion of Facebook representative Nick Bowditch that the best marketing tool in social media is complete integrity. “If you are simply yourself, then you will have no trouble remembering your positioning, your message or your unique selling point,” he said.

 The panel was united in the power of mobile devices. Over the last two years the ratio of computers to phones has flipped, with two thirds of the population now accessing facebook on their phones.

Google’s Matt Dawes said that an incredible one third of mobile searches are for local information. The figure is slightly lower for searches from computers.

This underlines the value of publishing platform and newsfeeds like the Westender that focus on a specific area and provide the link between the community and the back-end technology.

Head of Alcohol Policy Research, Prof Robin Room, has called for the legalisation of marijuana to reduce binge drinking and violence.

He says that it would significantly reduce government costs to “have a highly controlled legal (cannabis) market and tighten up the legal market of alcohol in the same way we tightened up the market of tobacco”.

“Cannabis is not without harm but it’s substantially less than alcohol and tobacco in terms of social harm,” he says.

More information about Professor Room is available at his website

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has expressed regrets at comments he made to staff last year that the investigation into News Limited was incompetent and unfair and that he would look after staff who were found guilty of wiretapping and other charges.

The comments were in direct contradiction to statements he made to the official investigation known as the Levison Inquiry, were secretly recorded by a staff member at the time and were publicly released last week.As a result of the statements, Murdoch has been recalled to face further questions by a House of Commons sub-committee and has made a series of public statements retreating from the positions expressed in the secretly recorded meeting

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