Author: Roberta

Last weekend, prior to the preselection of the ALP and Greens candidates I wrote “Glasson’s gladiators already waving inanely from behind their bulging bags of helium across the electorate, the ALP is keen to get out there and be seen.”

At the time, the colour to be worn by the ALP was not clear. Rudd had favoured white with our RUDDY this and that in red ink, local member Jackie Trad favours Green in most of her materials.

Now that all parties are preselected and out and about, it is with some relief that I can report the ALP has selected red to represent its left wing, grass roots selection, providing the standard and meaningful choice of red, blue and green for voters who find team colours easier to deal with than policy positions.

With a left leaning Labor light a small l liberal and an environmental Green, we can expect the policy positions to be equally clear cut. Whether or not the mainstream media will see fit to report it that way is another matter.

Hopefully it gives the people of Griffith the opportunity to get out and exercise their democratic muscle in a meaningful manner.

We here at Westender certainly look forward to reporting on the shenanigans as they unfold.

Left -wing candidate for Griffith, Terri Butler, has been preselected as the ALP candidate for Griffith.

The rank-and-file membership of the party fielded over 300 members at the preselection and the vote was more than two thirds in favour of Butler.

With the Greens preselection to take place tomorrow Sunday 18th and Palmer stating publicly that he will not be running a candidate in this by-election the field is ready but the race has not been called.

A February date is widely tipped but depends on the former Prime-Minister Kevin Rudd finalising his correspondence (ie writing a resignation letter to the Governor General) and the Prime Minister calling a date.

Read Terri Butler’s profile by Jan Bowman.

ALP members will head from West End to Coorparoo this Saturday night December 14^th to determine the ALP candidate for the Griffith byelection.

With Glasson’s gladiators already waving inanely from behind their bulging bags of helium across the electorate, the ALP is keen to get out there and be seen.

Glasson centered his 2013 campaign on Coorparoo, fielding over a hundred blue shirts every Saturday morning at his headquarters in Old Cleveland Rd.

The Greens set up shop in the Green Bar at the Coorparoo Bowls club just around the corner and will hold their Xmas party and campaign launch at the same premises next Wednesday

Coorparoo is the hot spot at the geographical centre of the electorate because it has a large number of swinging voters.  The suburbs between the train line and the ridge running from Coorparoo to Carindale have had an unusually high and stubborn Labor vote, partly because of loyalty to Rudd.

All parties are keen to dance with that band of swingers.

Not that all Westenders are happy with the focus on the outer boondocks – anywhere across Ipswich Rd.

Under the new preselection rules 385 rank and file members have to attend the meeting to give the membership 70% of the say in who the candidate is. Any less than that and the executive gets 50% of the vote.

Because the executive has backed Virgin pilot Jeremy de Lore while the left-leaning Westenders (and Anthony Albanese) are behind Terri Butler, there are rumbles on Boundary and Peel St that the move to Coorparoo is a deliberate disincentive to the membership, who otherwise might have wandered down to party headquarters after a cleansing ale and some tunes at the Joynt.

All is not smooth sailing in the Green camp either. We have seen announcements that serial candidate Geoff Ebbs will run again, that he will stand aside for state convenor Andrew Bartlett, and that Bartlett has resigned for personal reasons. Greens members have been advised that Ebbs is running again and preselection will take place on Sunday.

Glasson is watching all this with glee. His problem is a traditional first by-election swing against a new government, an unpopular leader and a complete policy vacuum. The longer the progressives take to get their campaigns in order the more traction his gladiators get on passing motorists.

A new study has shown that serious illness, struggling to hold down a regular job and poor social relationships are just some of the adverse outcomes in adulthood faced by those exposed to bullying in childhood.

It has long been acknowledged that bullying at a young age presents a problem for schools, parents and public policy makers alike. Though children spend more time with their peers than their parents, there is relatively little work done on understanding the impact of these interactions on their life beyond school.

The results of this research, published in Psychological Science, highlight the extent of which the risk of health, wealth and social problems is heightened by exposure to bullying; and in doing so is the first study to look into the effects beyond just health.

Professor Dieter Wolke of the University of Warwick and Dr William E. Copeland of Duke University Medical Center led the team, looking beyond the study of victims and investigating the impact on all those effected; the victims, the bullies themselves, and those who fall into both categories; ‘bully-victims’.

Professor Wolke said, “We cannot continue to dismiss bullying as a harmless, almost inevitable, part of growing up. We need to change this mindset and acknowledge this as a serious problem for both the individual and the country as a whole; the effects are long-lasting and significant.”

The ‘bully-victims’ presented the most significant health risk for adulthood, being over six times more likely to be diagnosed with a serious illness, smoke regularly or develop a psychiatric disorder.

The results show that bully-victims are perhaps the most vulnerable group of all. This group may turn to bullying after being victims of bullying themselves as they lack the emotional regulation, or the support, required to cope with it.

Professor Wolke added, “In the case of bully-victims, it shows how bullying can spread when left untreated. Some interventions are already available in schools but new tools are needed to help health professionals to identify, monitor and deal with the ill-effects of bullying. The challenge we face now is committing the time and resource to these interventions to try and put an end to bullying.”

All of the groups were more than twice as likely to have difficulty in keeping a job, or commit to saving, and as such displayed a higher propensity for being impoverished in young adulthood.

However, very few ill effects of being the bully were found in the study. When accounting for the influence of childhood psychiatric problems and family hardships, which were prevalent in the bullies, it showed that the act of bullying itself didn’t have a negative impact upon adulthood.

“Bullies appear to be children with a prevailing antisocial tendency who know how to get under the skin of others, with bully-victims taking the role of their helpers,” explained Professor Wolke. “It is important to finds ways of removing the need for these children to bully others and in doing so; protect the many children suffering at the hand of bullies as they are the ones who are hindered later in life.”

Though there was no real difference in the likelihood of being married or having children, all groups showed signs of having difficulty forming social relationships, particularly when it came to maintaining long term friendships or good ties with parents in adulthood.

The research assessed 1,420 participants four to six times between the ages of 9 and 16 years and adult outcomes between 24-26 years of age.