Labor, Greens, Fisticuffs.

Liberal's letterboxed 500,000 of these:

"Some of the things Labor might have to do for the Greens..." (got chopped)

Labor's ad in today's Age:

Greens ad in Wed + Thu's Age:

Number of times The Greens mention the Labor party: 0
Number of times Labor mentions The Greens: 10.

The Greens' ad is a bit unfortunate, as it doesn't mention there are split and open tickets in some lower house seats. But, it avoids attacking Labor for deceiving the public, slamming their attacks, that sort of thing - it's a mature response.

The Labor ad is distressing. It assumes Greens are upset, the only evidence I can find is to the contrary (I hear tell candidates are being contacted by - usually - confused supporters, but they get the facts in the end). Greens voters "deserve to be angry" - no, Labor IS angry, Green's see it simply as a split ticket. It claims a preference deal with The Greens and Liberals is "a fact" (there's just as much evidence to suggest Labor has a deal with the Liberals, to attack the Greens/Nats, and even more evidence of deals with Labor and Country Alliance). The CA deal is blatant, no split tickets, just direct preferencing, and the Lab-Lib deal attacked minor parties, ensuring Victoria remained a two-party state (which is a little undemocratic). But, it's only ever going to be circumstantial evidence, so conclusions shouldn't be jumped to, and claiming them to be absolute truths is a bit much.

"As the weekend polls have revealed, this election will go down to the wire" the ad claims.

WHY THIS IS A LIE: (An easy one.)
Centerbet has a Labor win at odds of 1.06, Liberal of 7.00
Morgan poll last weekend has Labor 44%, Coalition 38%, two party preferred: 55, 45.
72% of Victorians think Labor will win, 13% Lib/Nat's.
The poll was titled: "With A Week To Go: ALP Set To Win Victorian Election With Reduced Majority"
Sound like a close one? The most I could find is an article where the Lib's had almost got "a glimmer of hope".

"A handful of votes in a handful of seats could mean the Greens Party leaders wake up on Sunday with Ted Baillieu as Premier".

Currently, the ALP has 62 out of 88 lower house seats.
That's a 71% majority. Lib's are on 17, Nats on 7, Greens on 0.
That's not a handful of seats required, that's a jump of over 250% for Lib's to gain outright, 210% to gain with the Nationals.

And to put it into perspective - in the lower house, Labor is only really at risk of Greens getting ONE of their inner-city seats, the odds are still in Labor's favour, they still have more votes, but it's considered a possibility (unless there is some backlash against the Greens to Labor, but then the ALP would need to do some sort of scare campaign, which really is the reason for this whole episode.)

"All because the Greens Party leaders haven't kept their promise of principled politics."

One thing the people that make the decisions in The Greens find incredibly amusing (and the ad was brought out whilst we busily sorted cards and those corflute triangles tonight) is the word 'leader'. The decisions on preferences are not done by the state office (unless there are disputes that can't be resolved, or a region does something insane, like preference itself last or something.) This is ensured through their dedication to grassroots democracy, but is generally due to lack of staff.

And without going over AGAIN what I've gone over in previous posts, the Greens have only made an unprincipled decision if Labor is markedly different to Liberals in Victoria. They just aren't. The Herald-Sun had a side-by-side policy comparison yesterday - it could have been confused with a rather difficult "spot the difference" puzzle.

All up, the ALP has really gone overboard with this, and further tarnished their image in many minds, including my own skeptical view.

Is Labor still preferable to preference?
(Warning: Soul-searching ahead!)

This is actually a ponderable question at the moment.
Liberals started off with a great campaign, then took a turn for the worse, but still quite impressive environmentally and socially (for them, and in comparison to Labor - I mean, even their industrial relations policy is more progressive if you look at it objectively).
Labor has been quite disappointing, and has played along with whatever Liberals were going for.
But it is difficult to trust Liberals, especially after Kennett.
But Labor is quite corrupted, with their PPP's being disgraceful.
Overall, either Labor or Liberal is more progressive, depending on how you weigh the issues.
There IS still the tradition of Labor being left-wing, even if it IS two steps right, one step left at the moment.
So I would tend towards Labor, but ANY party being in such a majority is a bad thing, doubly so when Greens or decent minors could hold a balance.
I was seriously considering a coin flip for a while, but I might leave it until tomorrow to decide where my preferences will go.

I will see tomorrow, perhaps the newspapers will help me decide. Don't make me go the second option Labor, don't let me down, Greens are not a Labor-Preference-Machine.

On a much lighter note, Bob Brown was doing a Street-Walk(TM), where he seems to have passed Pop-Eye.

(Seriously, was this the BEST shot you could get to publish, Fairfax?)