I am not happy. This leaves those us Granville residents without any voice at all in the NSW Labor Shadow cabinet. It is a big blow.
It's no coincidence that these allegations come at a time when powerful forces have made clear their desire to silence Granvillian voices.
I personally give no credence at all to these allegations. I've never met Julia Finn but I do know Granville. Manipulating the rules of the NSW Labor Party to inflate your local branch membership so as to gain political advantage is simply not what we do here.
I've lived here for over a year and I've never seen any branch stacking. Either the branch stacking happens very discreetly or these are straight up lies by those whose anti-Granville agenda is well-known.
Some will say that now, at least, Julia Finn has more time to spend tending to the needs of her constituents, no longer distracted from high flying, high stakes world of the NSW Opposition's cabinet meetings. Maybe. Who knows, she might even find time to recruit actual humans to the local branch now. Anything is possible in these unprecedented times.
Now I am Granville till I die. I have "2142" tatooed across my heart.
But... well with all the heat we've been getting with this unseemly branch stacking scandal (I've heard property prices have dropped) ... well I thought there can't be any harm in checking out the neighouring places. Just to take a look.
And so on this day I set out to do something I had never done before. I would walk eastwrds to Clyde Train Station and there, I'd cross the train lines to the northern side, and walk streets of Clyde.
This was as far as I'd ever gone before:
On the other side was unknown territory. Forget branch stacking, did they even have Labor Party branches?
I walked forward with trepidation. I had to stop half way across to gather my courage.
It was when I began my descent on the other side of the tracks that I began to grasp just why these streets had such a notorious rep:
Look I'll not deny the sign caused me pause. But it takes a bit more than the threat of entering Kelly Country to scare me. I used hangout with the Kellys' back in the day. In fact I was known as the "Fifth Kelly", like with Stu Sutcliffe and the Beatles, only I didn't die of a brain haemorrhage but was kicked out of the Kelly Gang for excessive drunkardness. Which, if you ever saw how those bastards drank, you'd know was an achievement.
Anyway, if you walk closer you can see those red splatters on the wall aren't actually exploded blood splatters at all. They are actually just leaves! Look:
So I made it. I walked a free man into that barren wasteland that lies just east of Granville and west of Auburn.
I have seen more welcoming places to be honest.
I have read that as the suburb is just industrial these days, and no one actually lives in Clyde any more. Having seen how mean Clyde's houses are, I'm not surprised.
And I don't know what Clyde is hiding, but security is out of control! This place is protected by a flying jeep driven by a ghost child!
And I don't know what they dump in this body of water, but it's called Duck River and I didn't see a single duck. It's very suspicious.
Still, you can get all your cement needs met in Clyde, so it's not all bad.
But the strangest thing I noticed about Clyde was that, while in Granville the berries on our trees are red or sometimes green, here the berries were purple.
Or yellow.
This was very unnerving. It was the strange berry colours that convinced me something was not right.
I had to get out, I moved quickly, not raising me head to notice what I can only assume were an increasingly bizarre array of colours, like brink pink or off-white with magenta spots.
Finally, I made it back onto Granville land and headed straight to safety.
At the end of the day, whatever problems Granville faces, I think I am far better here, where it is relatively safe. Plus it turns ot the Granville elctorate takes in a large chunk of Clyde anyway.
Still, a nice day.