Cheers

Venise

However Venise lives in the comforting shadow of Prince Pete of Malvern and there is no reason for hyperbole. Besides…… Venise has never travelled to the outskirts of Melbourne.

Otherwise I largely agree.

I need a Bex and a lie down….

My tap is dry

His attitude about the tragedy of the MDB and the Victorian Premier John Brumby’s bloody mindedness is but one in a long list of things he has tackled.

The Black Friday bushfires which killed so many people and animals and wildlife could easily be blamed on the state Labor Government and it’s utter disregard of imposing laws to make developers build homes to a proper standard. Or of failing to force local councils to build proper roads suited for heavy trucks in new estates allowed in bushfire prone areas. Local councils even allowed cul-des-sacs to be constructed. Thus making it impossible for fire trucks to pass from one street to another.

Another prime example of John Brumby’s attention to the wrong detail was the discovery that the dams providing water to Melbourne were in many cases down to twenty-five percent of full, and that a city of four million people needed more water. Surprise surprise; we are only into our fifteenth year of drought!

Panic stations. Umm what to do? Apparently he thinks deeply on this problem. Which is odd. Why? His government has only been in power for eleven or so years. Ah ha, the answer! It is to drain the Thompson river in order to divert the water to Melbourne. How lucky are the local farmers? Not content with that, the decision is taken to build a desalination plant at one of Victoria’s last and fast disappearing wild beaches. They are the ones which don’t have all the sand chewed up and the sand gouged out by four-wheel drives. Places where native animals and birds abound. Sorry folks, people are far more important than a lot of silly old native fauna. It all brings employment to local areas and, if nothing else John Brumby is all about finding jobs for the workers.

Would there have been a logical answer to the problem of so many people and so little water? You bet. Why not make it mandatory for the owners of every building to construct and use the rain water that does fall? Why not indeed, it would be far cheaper and far more environmentally friendly. So quaint, so logical but not nearly employing the amount of people which John Brumby so resolutely protects.

We are now a city of four million people and climbing and as a ‘populate or perish’ man from way back John Brumby has begged people to come and live here. And instead of making it mandatory for city dwellings to go up, he encourages them to move out. Melbourne is one of the most spread out cities in the world. If I wanted to go to one of the really outer suburbs I would allow myself one and a half to two hours of driving to get there. BTW I live very close to the centre of Melbourne. If I lived in one of the outer suburbs I would have to allow myself three hours.

Why all this emphasis on driving? Well that’s one thing he hasn’t done. All these far flung suburbs have no infrastructure. How logical is that?

All of the above is testament to our beloved Premier’s tenacity and capacity to bugger up the Murray Darling Basin, along with everything else he has tackled.
Why does he behave like this? Because he can.