Councillor Jess Jennings has foreshadowed his intention to propose a number of new drought strategies for the council.

The first is a plan to provide  an immediate 50 per cent discount for anyone needing to purchase water during the current dry conditions.

But, for primary producers, he wants to go further, calling for council to provide free water for stock and domestic use.

While the current drought seems to have crept up slowly on the district’s farmers, at the same time it has come too quickly for state and federal government support packages to keep pace.

But council is a smaller and more agile tier of government and Cr Jennings would like to see his proposal implemented within hours rather than weeks of a decision being made on Wednesday night.

While the cost to council of such a move remains unclear, you would expect broad support from Cr Jennings’ colleagues who would be loath to be seen to be kicking farmers while they are down.

The other of Cr Jennings’ proposals, however, might be more contentious.

Cr Jennings wants to change to the region’s drought management plan to require for water restrictions to be imposed once the Ben Chifley Dam hits 50 per cent capacity rather than the 40 per cent capacity that is currently the case.

This newspaper has long argued that water restrictions should be imposed sooner rather than later and only last week made the point that waiting for the level to hit an arbitrary 40 per cent capacity was doing more harm than good.

But given this issue has been around so long, some of Cr Jennings’ colleagues may not rush to let him take credit for the plan.

Cr Ian North has previously asked whether council should revisit its water restrictions policies and so, too, has Cr Monica Morse.

And Cr Warren Aubin has regularly pushed to have the dam wall raised again, presumably in an attempt to avoid the need to introduce water restrictions at all.

So on a council there is no strong power bloc, Cr Jennings should not expect his proposals to go unchallenged.

That said, this paper wholeheartedly supports any move that would impose sensible water restrictions on all users – and we see no reason to wait any longer.