Premier Steve Bracks should get to Mildura now and start talking before he needs a visa to do so.
- Cr Vernon Knight, Mildura Rural City Council, 28.10.04

Mildura is thinking about seceding from Victoria and joining either New South Wales or South Australia. This comes after the Victorian Government proposed a toxic waste dump at Hattah-Nowingi, about 40km south of Mildura near the Calder Highway.

The Australian of October 29 has an item on the subject, as does The Age.

On October 12 there was a rally in Melbourne protesting the proposed waste facility (reports from News Ltd, The Age, The Bendigo Advertiser, and Green Left Weekly). The Herald-Sun reports claims that the Victorian Government had offered the Mildura Council $240 million worth of development projects in return for dropping their opposition to the dump - claims denied by the state Major Projects Minister.

The issue has raised questions in South Australian parliament (ABC Riverland) while Richard Pratt - 2002 inductee into the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame and Australia's second richest man - has written to premier Steve Bracks expressing his concern.

We passed through Mildura travelling to and from Adelaide on our holiday and saw quite a lot of "No Toxic Waste Dump" sites on the roadside. The Mildura council has a good resources page about the campaign. There's even a postcard in PDF format that you can print out and send to Steve Bracks to make your protest. Unfortunately their agenda and minutes page has not been updated since June so there is no copy of the secession debate online.

The real centre of the protest action, however, is the Save The Food Bowl Alliance website.

But all this talk of joining NSW or SA though... why not just go the whole hog and become an independent nation? People's Republic of Sunraysia, I think that's a great idea!