Hunting and fishing aficionados the Country Alliance will preference the Labor Party in 10 lower house seats in exchange for ALP preferences in the upper house regions of Northern and Eastern Victoria.

Crikey understands that under the surprising tie-up, set to be announced on Friday, Labor will benefit from Alliance largess in a swathe of lower house electorates, including the crucial marginals of Ripon, Bendigo East, Ballarat East and Monbulk that the Coalition needs to form government.

But in two seats — Gembrook and South Barwon — the four-wheel-drive fans will preference Coalition candidates over Tammy Lobato and Michael Crutchfield, owing to the pro-environment views of the sitting members. In two other marginals the party will distribute a double-sided “split” ticket.

The pact is likely to anger the rural group’s conservative base, who would usually be expected to favour the Coalition.

On Sunday, Labor controversially announced it would favour Country Alliance ahead of the Greens in the two upper house regions of Northern and Eastern Victoria, potentially netting Alliance candidate Steve Threlfall, whom the Greens have dubbed “Steve Fielding with a gun”,  an unlikely triumph. The lower-house deal is Labor’s payoff.

Alliance spokesman and former ABC board member Russell Bate refused to comment on the specific preference negotiations, saying only they would be revealed when the Victorian Electoral Commission makes the official announcement on Friday.

However, he said the party’s “general principle” was to support the sitting member in marginal seats. Bate was more forthcoming when discussing Crikey founder Stephen Mayne’s preference negotiations, claiming Mayne had approached him on Saturday but just hours later sledged the party in quotes provided to The Sunday Age‘s Mel Fyfe.

Mayne confirmed the discussion, saying he was repelled after it emerged Country Alliance had done its own “sleazy deal” with Labor and the S-x Party.

The Labor-Country Alliance agreement could prove crucial in Ripon, where agriculture minister Joe Helper is facing down defeat on a 4.3% margin, and assist Ben Hardman to get over the line in Seymour, where Labor is under threat from anti pipeline campaigner Jan Beer and the Liberals’ Cindy McLeish. In Jacinta Allan’s seat of Bendigo East, where Labor was launching its campaign this morning, the stitch-up forms part of the party’s “save Jacinta” campaign to defend the minister’s slender 5.4% advantage.

Founded by Bate in 2005, the Alliance secured just over 2% of the vote in Northern Victoria at the 2006 poll, but did not run any lower house candidates. While the group is expected to fall flat outside its rural heartland, it could still draw around 1.5% elsewhere. A key question is whether the party will end up distributing how-to-vote cards, without which the preference decision is meaningless.

There could also be a pay off in policy terms. In June, the Labor Party announced a controversial deal to allow duck hunting in Murray River Park, which drew the ire of environmental activists.

Meanwhile in the Labor-held seat of Northcote, a district that until Sunday was under threat of turning Green, a mysterious candidate by the name of Dominic Marino will channel preferences to sitting member Fiona Richardson. Marino is listed as an independent on the ballot paper, however Crikey can reveal his campaign is managed by leading Country Alliance powerbroker and vintage guns fan Russell Pearson.

Pearson told Crikey that Marino would direct preferences to the Liberals’ Steve Moran, which would then be passed on to Richardson after Moran is inevitably excluded from the ballot. However he rejected allegations his charge was running as a feeder for the ALP. Marino had approached him as a fellow member of a local gun club, concerned about the Greens’ influence in the inner north, and he held “conservative” views, Pearson said.

There has been speculation that the sitting member Fiona Richardson’s husband, former ALP state secretary Stephen Newnham, had been running a rogue campaign in Northcote, however Pearson told Crikey this morning that he hadn’t been in touch with Newnham “on this matter” in recent times.

But other candidates are less convinced. Fellow independent Darren Lewin-Hill said that “questions needed to be asked” over whether Labor had colluded with the Country Alliance to shore up its position.

Labor is also set to benefit from its unexpected decision to preference the S-x Party before the Greens in Northern Metropolitan. Crikey understands that party impresario Robbie Swan was rapt at stitching up a 50-50 preference split between Labor and the Coalition, in which the party will alternately preference Labor or the Coalition, in exchange for some mutual love in the upper house. In Richmond, the S-x Party will back the ALP and preference the Greens last, which could keep housing minister Dick Wynne in secure employment.

ALP State Secretary Nick Reece, who was attending Labor’s launch this morning in Bendigo, did not respond to Crikey‘s request for comment on the deals.