The Victorian Government has undertaken large-scale sacking of executives on water and environment boards.

The boards of Victoria's 19 water companies are being overhauled, as part of reforms that the State Government says are aimed at creating a stronger focus on climate change.

It means that all 135 executive positions will be cleared and re-opened to an expression of interest process.

Water Minister Lisa Neville said the State wanted to bring in more active board members.

“Unfortunately over the last four years the water authorities were pretty much told that they were not to spend any time looking at climate change or any adaptation measures,” she told Fairfax Media reporters.

She said that if current board members and chairs “felt that they were in a position to really support and get behind our vision and that they had the right skills mix, that they should absolutely reapply”.

The state’s water board certainly had some contentious postings, especially those at the Office of Living Victoria. 

Ms Neville said she also hopes to see a more even gender mix on boards of the water corporations after the dust has settled.

The Opposition, under which many of the appointments were made, says the government is needlessly sacking “skilled, professional and experienced water board members”.

“This is a blatant politicisation of the state's water boards,” Opposition spokesperson on water Peter Walsh said.

For News Corp’s State Political Editor James Campbell, it is a sign of a pro-union government taking a wrecking ball to the way Victoria is run.

“Since coming to office the new Government has — in no particular order — sacked the chair and CEO of WorkSafe, the board of Ambulance Victoria, abolished the Linking Melbourne Authority and, yesterday, dumped every water board in the state,” Mr Campbell wrote in an opinion piece for The Herald Sun.

“It has repealed the previous government’s “move on” laws designed to break pickets at labour disputes and abolished its construction code, which restricted the CFMEU’s ability to operate on building sites.

“It has made... large pay increases to the members of the paramedics union... pay increases the size of which we have yet to see.

“In doing so it has junked the idea of having an across-the-board wages policy, running the risk of a public sector wages explosion as other unions line up for a fair suck of the sauce bottle.

“Hang on to your hats, Victoria — we’ve got ourselves a proper honest-to-goodness old-fashioned Kirner-esque Labor Government where the Socialist Left is large and in charge,” Mr Campbell wrote.