I'm sure that Paul Johanson, quoted in the article, is a nice, law-abiding person but his advice to take a bike into town and "lock it to a street post" while toddling off for a latte or whatever ignores reality and legality.

To pop a sandwich board outside their doorstep costs a business an application to council, site inspections, hazard appraisals, insurance and ongoing random inspections to verify all of the stipulated conditions (if and only when approval is granted) - along with all fees, charges and penalties. We are told that this is for reasons of public safety.

The alternate idea is that cyclists are entitled to just hitch their hoss to the nearest "street post" on the footpath while they leap into a lycra-shop.

If the article gets the legalities correct, shop owners can add two wheels and handlebars to their sandwich boards, chain them to a "street post" and, calling them a bicycle, cut several months and dollars of red tape, insurance and fees. The problem is, that won't leave many street post hitching rails available for bike riders. So while there may very well be a "call to ditch cars for bikes" I would like to sound another call to all those healthy cyclists: ditch your bikes and just use your feet and/or public transport.

The State’s Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) often pours water into places that are very hard to justify. 

Our areas willingly accommodate delivery of environmental water even if the sites being watered are not natural river fed wetlands.

It is time that OEH were accountable for the water they use and the water they dump.

However, during times of drought, it is highly concerning when a non-strategic, poorly timed, “suck it and see” approach is being used by OEH.

This flies in the face of commonsense as our natural instinct is to conserve every drop to use wisely during catastrophic times like now.

Instead of paying attention to beneficial, timely, co-management principles, OEH are putting parcels of water into low lying areas on private and public land just because they can and to see what might happen!

Much of OEH’s water portfolio was ‘acquired’ from irrigators via policy and rule changes and has been given priority over other water classifications like High Security (HS), stock and domestic and General Security (GS). 

At one-minute past midnight on July 1, most of OEH’s bucket is replenished all set to start the new watering year.

It doesn’t matter whether we have had above average rainfall or even floods; this water is not netted off against our environmental commitments. OEH can trade water with little transparency or accountability.

It almost beggar’s belief that water that irrigators must pay fees and charges for, which would previously have been allocated to production, can now be put on the market to sell to farmers at inflated prices.

Water is our major input and if it’s made scarce, then prices will skyrocket. 

With budgets so tight, it only takes one unlucky guess or one mistake for irrigators to go backwards and run at a loss.