By Tony Wright
Things were slow in the Burvale Hotel bistro in Nunawading as Ted Baillieu won the toss and opened the batting in the contest called Victoria 2010: The People's Forum.
Precisely two people pulled up chairs beneath the big screen to listen to Big Ted declare he was an architect and therefore, unsurprisingly, in favour of building for the future. To be fair, within an hour the bistro audience had climbed to five, and no one took any notice of daredevil motorcyclists undertaking sky-high whoopsedoodles on the other screen. The Opposition Leader, you might conclude, was way ahead.
He wouldn't, however, have cared to know what was happening out in the gaming room, where the pokies chuckled their electronic siren calls. The only screens there played the trots from Bathurst and Launceston and the dogs from Dapto.
Happily for the Opposition Leader - and a little later, Premier John Brumby - 200 undecided voters were crammed hip-to-hip in the Brew Bar to witness the two leaders display their wares live. This seemed a triumph of Victorian democracy - there wasn't a brew to be had, and the distinctly dry show was scheduled to last over two hours.
Perhaps this was a concession to the assertion that the pre-election event was a ''town hall-style meeting''. After the federal election, when the alleged town hall meetings were held in Sydney's giant Rooty Hill RSL Club and a rugby league pokie palace in Brisbane, it is well-established that middle Australia's town halls are now pubs and clubs, gaming facilities compulsory.
The status of those 200 undecided voters was tested by the warm-up act, John Blackman from Hey Hey It's Saturday.
For some reason, he invited those planning to vote Labor to raise their hands. The declared undecided dutifully kept their hands in their pockets. Liberal voters, anyone? Nope. Greens? One woman happily threw her hand in the air, raising a doubt about the selection process.
Big Ted set the tone with a nostalgic ramble about the good old days when the great leaders of a state blessed with fine pasture land, a reliable water supply, energetic people and later, boundless multicultural diversity, took all their opportunities and built a fine state.
But now (Big Ted looked grave) the Labor government, 11 years old and asking for 15, was overseeing failing services, infrastructure shortages, rising construction costs, a rising tide of violence and crime, crumbling transport services, under-resourced schools and hospitals ''where access is an issue''.
Ted the Architect, however, would fix the problems and look to the future. Under questioning, he promised to make train stations safe and comfortable, end suspended sentences and stop motorcycle deaths by introducing better rider training.
Meanwhile, he'd take off his jacket because it was getting hot in the Brew Bar, and he'd look a bit more like a chap ready to roll up his sleeves.
John Brumby arrived without either jacket or tie, declaring himself fortunate to have grown up in Melbourne while also learning about hard work on his father's farm. Yes, he'd sold shoes and worked in a service station, too, where he was proud to say he could check a car's tyres and radiator and fill its fuel tank in two minutes and 30 seconds. Much more multi-skilled than an architect, clearly.
He was, unsurprisingly, very proud of his wonderful state (though he modestly conceded it wasn't without unspecified problems) and proud his children had gone to government schools, neglecting to mention that he and Ted had been classmates at Melbourne Grammar.
It wasn't long before the Premier was required to admit that he couldn't do much about cheap grog getting young people legless, but there were lock-out laws and more police and training for the responsible service of alcohol, he countered.
And why had he wasted time providing more nurses, a stern gentleman demanded, causing the Premier to extol the virtues of his health funding record and planned reforms. If you hadn't wasted so much money on your transport ticketing system, the stern gentleman riposted, you'd have a better health system.
More than a few of the audience seemed to glance yearningly at the bar without beer.
Tony Wright is Age national affairs editor.