Politics: Fear is a double-edged sword

There's this lovely bit of fear-mongering from a federal government minister. This government has always been good at the politics of fear, and it's good to see they haven't lost form. The only trouble is, it's easy to get it turned against you. The way I interpret his argument is this: "The Greens will hold the balance of power in the Senate after the election, so if you want a functional government you'd better vote for the party that can work constructively with them in the Senate. Unfortunately, that's not us." Of course, it's naive in the extreme to assume that the Greens will hold the balance of power, but the politics of fear has never been strong on logic. We only barely avoided having the Christian fundamentalist Family First holding the balance of power in the Senate at the last election, and in my opinion that's something to really be afraid of. I only hope the Labor Party has realised they can't do deals with the devil without expecting to get burnt.