WHY, in the midst of the worst drought on record, is Premier John Brumby cutting irrigators' chances of gaining $58m in drought assistance?

The answer is a mystery.

The threshold was 50 per cent in 2006-07 and then, last season, it was 40 per cent. This season it's been cut to 30 per cent.

What's going on?

Does the Victorian Government somehow believe irrigators are slowly weaning themselves off water?

Is there some mysterious Treasury model at work here?

If the drought continues we might even see the Government cutting the threshold to 20 per cent.

Surely the threshold should at least remain the same as last season.

Goulburn irrigators well remember how very close they came to reaching the 40 per cent allocation threshold in December last year.

On December 3, 2007, Goulburn Murray Water announced a 37 per cent allocation.

This season the December allocation will be made on December 1.

All the Government is doing is creating more uncertainty at a time of crisis.

It took enormous community and media pressure to get the Government to deliver its drought package this week.

For the past fortnight all we kept hearing from the Government was the argument that it normally didn't announce its drought package until late October.

Then, when Mr Brumby finally makes the announcement, we discover it simply creates another tier of uncertainty for irrigators.

Sure, given the outlook for the next two weeks, allocations may not reach 30 per cent on the Goulburn or Murray systems.

But why create this uncertainty?

Is the Government hell-bent on further eroding the confidence of rural Victorians in its ability to deliver a fair deal?