That and adopting the “if it’s yellow, let it mellow” philosophy, much to the disdain of many a house visitor!

The Brumby Government is going to live or die on whether it makes progress of fixing Melbourne’s transport and water problems.

Bang on. And you can add housing affordability and energy sustainability to that list of what amounts to communal amenity issues.

But these problems arise out of scarcity of resources in an increasingly crowded public space. The federal govt holds the key to this issues since it controls most of the flow of immigrants into the metro regions.

However the current minister (Evans) is a dogmatic liberal with a penchant for sucking up to the Big End of Town. He plans to bring in a net 100,000 people per year, year in year out for the next three years. But we are already bursting at the seams.

AUSTRALIA’S population is increasing by a million every three years, as record immigration levels combine with a rebounding birthrate to produce the biggest population growth in the nation’s history.

Figures from the Bureau of Statistics estimate that the nation’s population grew by a record 331,872 last year, a growth rate of 1.6%, the highest for almost 20 years.

Victoria mirrored the national trend. The state’s population grew by a record 82,430 over the year, more than at any stage in either the postwar years of mass emigration from Europe, or the frenzy of the 1850s gold rush.

In just three years since the state’s population reached 5 million, it has added almost a quarter of a million more — most of them from overseas, as Melbourne has become a magnet for foreign students, temporary workers and migrants.

The shoehorning of an extra million people into the major metro areas over the next term of this government will make any political efforts aimed at conservation and co-operation look feeble and derisory.

The New Right/New Left “debtquity and diversity” coalition love this. More bums on seats is good for the wealthfare state if they make it and more fodder for welfare state if they dont.

Old traditioned Leftists need to ask themselves if physical growth is the be all and end all of policy. If it is then be prepared for a lifetime of queues and cities that will more and more resemble Bangkok and Mexico.

No more green and pleasant lands within the urban fringe.

And if enough people still continue to pay huge amounts for town water, then you’ve probably raised the cash needed to boost supplies.

I meant that people will hardly notice, because volume charges are such a small part of most people’s household budgets.

The exception might be pensioners with elaborate gardens, but I suspect most such people would prefer to water their plants at a higher price, than watch them die.

Personally I’d much rather see much more expensive water (potentially using staggered pricing) than the absurd set of water restrictions we currently deal with. But do we have a good idea of what the demand elasticity of water is?

Anyway, I reckon to defeat Brumby the Coalition needs to run a campaign that includes a sensible plan that doesn’t propose to double Melbourne’s water bill (whether that’s a good or bad thing is beside the point) as is currently the case. It also needs to be simple so the MSM can digest it.

I think to establish any sort of credibility with Victorian voters water has to be the key issue.

Maybe we are all just exhausted by politics after two years of the US elections, and the global crisis stuff. I am feeling increasingly disengaged, and looking forward to a couple of weeks at the beach in January.

Further, the locals would probably rather the Mitchell water goes to Melbourne than through their living rooms like it has twice in the last few years.