Tanya Plibersek splashes $205m cash for Murray Darling Basin water recovery

Labor will spend over $200m to recover just under four per cent of remaining water required to deliver on the Murray Darling Basin Plan.

Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Labor will spend more than $200m to recover just under 4 per cent of water it has vowed to return to the Murray-Darling river system, showcasing the mammoth cost of delivering on the plan championed by Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek.

Ms Plibersek said the government had paid irrigators, farmers and traders $205m for 26.35 gigalitres of water entitlements sustainability targets in the Murray-­Darling Basin Plan.

This is a small fraction of the more than 700GL still outstanding under the plan and does not include the 450GL of extra water required to be returned to the environment that Labor promised South Australians before the last election.

The government has been forced to reveal the spending commitment as part of contractual obligations and to meet trans­parency rules. As part of this purchase, water will be diverted to three NSW catchments including the Lachlan, Namoi and Murray to help the government reach a key water recovery target.

Labor is committed to delivering the remaining water through a combination of water buybacks, water savings projects and efficiency measures such as infrastructure projects.

The government has repeatedly refused to reveal how much money has been set aside to recover water through buybacks or how much water it is planning to recover through that method, and is hopeful it can recover some through infrastructure projects with the states.

Irrigators and the Nationals have railed against buybacks as a method of water recovery, saying that the commonwealth’s intervention into the water market will cause price spikes and have harmful consequences on basin communities.

Ms Plibersek said the Albanese government was determined to deliver the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in full and made clear purchasing was just “one tool in the box to recover water … Through these willing sellers, we will return water that is desperately needed to restore our rivers and support the plants, animals and communities that rely on it,” she said.

An interim productivity commission report released last October found “very little progress” had been made on water recovery over the past five years, underscoring the need for supply measures and voluntary water purchases to be made.

It found the federal government did not have enough money allocated to recover the full 450GL of additional environmental water by 2027, noting it would require “significant additional funding”.

It also found water savings projects were unlikely to make a significant contribution to water recovery, with taxpayers likely to be on the hook for expensive buyback tenders.

Analysis by the National Farmers Federation suggests taxpayers face a $3bn bill to help Labor deliver on its election commitment to recover 450GL of water for the environment as part of the sector’s campaign against buybacks.

The push to recover water comes after Labor successfully passed legislation to amend the basin plan last November, removing a cap on buybacks to enable delivery of environmental water.

The new agreement also extended the deadline for water savings targets to be met under the plan out to 2026.

The plan went through despite Victoria’s opposition, with the state refusing to sign up to the plan to buy water entitlements.

EDITOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the government purchased the water for the equivalent of $129 a litre. It was actually purchased at an average rate of 0.78 cents per litre. The error was made in the production process.