Leaders enter Vic election home stretch

Labor will sell its record on jobs, education and economic management in the final
stretch of Victoria's election campaign, while the coalition will announce tax cuts,
a new jail and details of its anti-corruption commission.
The coalition will also release costings of its promises next week after refusing to
submit them to Treasury, instead having policies analysed by an independent
accounting firm.
With just eight sleeps until election day, Premier John Brumby pitched his case to
the Melbourne Press Club on why he believes Labor deserves 15 years of power in
Victoria.
"It's a choice between strong leadership for the times ahead or an opposition that
has set a new low in Australian politics for accountability and scrutiny," he said
on Friday.
"It's about values, it's about character, it's about what you see is what you get.
"I'm hungry - hungry for the opportunity to keep working with Victorians to meet the
challenges of the future."
Mr Brumby said the prospect of a coalition government was as big a risk to
prosperity and jobs as the fragile global economy.
He said the state's productivity growth in the last decade was the strongest in the
nation at 1.6 per cent annually.
The state has had the highest number of dwellings approved of all the states in the
past 29 months.
"If it wasn't for Victoria, over the last year Australia's housing industry would
have been in recession," he said.
Labor's odds of winning have shortened to $1.15, and the coalition's have blown out
to $5.00, according to bookmakers.
"We've said all along we are the underdog here," Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu told
reporters in the Yarra Valley.
"It's not for me to worry about what the bookies think."
Mr Baillieu said he would announce the coalition's tax policy, which may include
stamp duty relief for homebuyers, over the next few days.
He will announce a new jail to accommodate a larger prison population on the back of
a pledge to axe suspended sentences.
Mr Baillieu will also explain details of the coalition's plan for an independent
commission against corruption.
On Friday, he pledged a mass planting of two million trees in metropolitan and
regional Victoria if elected next Saturday.
Mr Baillieu said 1.5 million trees would be planted by community and land care
groups across Melbourne, while 500,000 trees would be planted outside the city to
regenerate waterways at a cost of $4 million.
Mr Brumby also went green on Friday, travelling to Halls Gap to promise $116 million
to protect coastal parks and create new bushwalking tracks in wilderness areas.
Back in Melbourne, he reiterated his track record as a dedicated tree planter at his
farm in Harcourt and said the opposition's plan would barely raise the carbon
credits needed to cover bussing the media out to the Yarra Valley.