Victoria has had a dry winter and already water restrictions are being tabled for the city with John Thwaites saying, " It is very likely that we will need to go onto stage one restrictions from the first of September. We indicated at the beginning of the month that unless we got average rainfall or above average rainfall for August, we would need to be on the restrictions, and unfortunately we've had below average rainfall through August. ".

Where is Victorian water used? State-wide, Melbourne is a very small user of water. From southeastwater.com comes the following graph ;

South East Water also links to a graph showing the 200 largest users of water. The food and non-food industries are the biggest users of non-residential water with council's in third place, but significantly behind in percentage terms.

The Department of Primary Industries contains information that Victoria is highly dependent on surface water . With 90% of Victoria's water coming from surface water sources and 10% from ground-water. Given that Australian rainfall is non-seasonal, unlike North America and Europe. Australian rainfalls are highly dependent on El-Nino and consequently are irregular. The high dependence on surface water is an issue.

Last year Goulburn and Yass went through deep water difficulties due to lack of rainfall, despite the Wollondilly River being nearby.

The water catchment areas are going to have to decentralise and diversify with greater reliance on water tanks and and other suburban catchment forms for non-drinking water uses. Recycling of water is another conservation method, though Toowoomba knocked that on the head in a recent referendum.

This doesn't change the fact of the wet nature of the Australian economy which has primary industry drawing heavily from our water supply. It may be that industry is concentrated around water supplies, like the Murrumbidgee, while cities such as Sydney and Melbourne are not, however livestock, rice and cotton make up the dominant portion of primary usage in NSW .

The Victorian Local Government Act has a pretty good set of objectives, roles and functions for a Local Council, far better than the NSW legislation.

The Victorian Local Government Act is pretty sparsely worded and better for it IMO. It requires that a Council not contain less than five councillors and no more than twelve. The Act also requires that they Councillors be elected.

Councillors are disqualified from the position if they are bankrupt or undergoing bankrupcy, they have not taken the oath three months after being elected. There are also various penal convictions that disqualify the person from becoming a Councillor for seven years after their sentence is served.

The Act also enforces a uniform election day on all Councils with the terms being four years. A local government constitution as part of the CFC2 need not deal with details like that which may be best done in subsidiary statutory acts rather than a constitutional act.

The Mayor appears to be uniformly elected from the Council under the Victorian Local Government Act;

71. Election of Mayor

(1) The Councillors must elect a Councillor to be the Mayor of the Council.

(3) The Mayor is to be elected-

(a) after the last Saturday in November but not later than 31 December in each year; or
(b) as soon as possible after any vacancy in the office of Mayor occurs.

(4) The election of a Mayor after the period specified in this section does not invalidate the election.

(6) The Mayor of a Shire Council may be titled the President.

(7) Any reference to "Mayor" includes a reference to "Lord Mayor" or "President" as the case may be.

In my opinion the best part of the Local Government Act is the section on the Council's Charter;

• Purpose
• Constituted
• Objectives
• Role
• Functions
• Power

Victoria has been dominated by Liberal and anti-Labor parties for most of its electoral history. It is only in the last twenty years that Labor has become competitive in the state.

The state was sufficiently anti-Labor that there was a competitive electoral market for many non-labor parties such as the Conservative Party, the Reform Party, the Country Party, the UAP, the Electoral Reform Party (which held a minority government for a few days) and the Liberal and Country party. The latter held government for 27 years until the Liberals were able to win government on their own in 1972.

Econamau, Costar and Strangio write:

Labor's historical inability to win elections and form governments has been a major feature of Victorian politics. From 1902, the year when the party's organisation was finalised, to 1982, Labor had only been in government a total of 102 months. Of these brief periods in office Labor had formed a majority government only once.

Arguably the internal party conflicts with Bob Santamaria made Labor uncompetitive - however - they were uncompetitive before the mid-1950s as well. Ultimately it was electorally futile for the Democratic Labor Party as it did not win a single seat in Victorian parliament either. Victoria had adopted single seat districts with preferential voting for the Assembly and Council. At the national government level in the House this voting method has entrenched a party duopoly.