Liberal Deal.

One of the popular angles of Greens critique from Labor supporters around election time was of a sell-out preference deal with the Liberal party.

Labor made the following accusations:

• Greens did a deal with the Liberals,
• Greens got inner-city Liberal preferences (some second last, instead of mostly last),
• for running split or open tickets in some seats (allowing voter to pick Labor or Liberal preferences)
• thus, Greens support WorkChoices

Greens claimed:

• “We aren’t preferencing the Liberals”
  Argue their IR policy is more anti-WorkChoices than Labor

FACTS:

• The Greens do not explicitly deny deals with Liberals.
• The Greens only ruled out doing any deals with Family First, and were willing to talk with all parties.
• From Jon Faine’s attempts, no party was willing to discuss deals when they were being done, and only one was willing to discuss the process they were using (Greens).
• As far as I can tell, no party has confirmed any deals – even the obvious ones are still only speculation.

JUDGEMENT:
Did they do a deal? Quite possibly, but supporters believed they were told there was no deal (despite it not being explicitly denied) - this suggests spin from the Greens. SHAME.
Whether running a split ticket allowing preferences to go to Liberals or Labor is considered to be unprincipled entirely depends on whether each supporter considers there to be a substantial difference.