Westend warriors weekend in Coorparoo

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.