It looks a lot like a community newspaper – with its Sudoku, crosswords, local news and soup recipes – until you get to the glowing assessment of the Napthine government's work on the Frankston railway line.

Welcome to The Southern Express, a newspaper produced by the Liberal Party and distributed at train stations this month in the lead-up to Victoria's election.

The Southern Express.

The paper's production is a sign of the extraordinary lengths to which the major parties are going to win the marginal seats dotted along the bay down to Frankston.

Not that production of The Southern Express by a political party is immediately apparent: the Liberal Party name does not appear amid its eight pages.