Albanese keeps federal water trade secret while demanding supermarket price transparency

The federal government has been slammed for “double standards” after keeping the price, type and source of water it is buying secret, following their first round of Basin buybacks.

Federal water pricing has been kept hidden, despite Water Minister Tanya Plibersek saying it’s “imperative” trust and transparency are restored to markets. Picture: Martin Ollman

The federal government is refusing to reveal the price it has paid for water entitlements under its first multimillion-dollar Murray-Darling Basin water tender at a time when it is demanding supermarkets deliver greater food and grocery price transparency.

The federal government has purchased 33 water entitlement parcels from NSW irrigators for a total of $55.5 million since the water tender opened in March last year, but has failed to detail the source, type and volume of water purchased.

National Irrigators Council chairman Jeremy Morton said “we don’t know where the water has come from, volume or entitlement type”, which are critical to determine how much the government has paid per megalitre.

“Price discovery is key to a well-functioning market,” Mr Morton said.

The level of secrecy even extends to confidentiality clauses prohibiting irrigators from revealing any information about the water deals without the department’s approval.

The Weekly Times approached one irrigator who confirmed he could not speak, due to the confidentiality clause, refusing to even reveal the type of water shares he sold under the federal tender.

A spokesman for the federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water said that under the water tender it had “started accepting offers to sell water in the relevant catchments to help ‘Bridge the Gap’ from August 2023”.

Yet searches of the NSW Water Register show no water entitlement trades have been registered against any of the Commonwealth’s 116 NSW Water Access Licences.

Irrigators and water brokers said it normally took from four to a maximum of eight weeks to complete the conveyancing and record a transfer of ownership on the register.

Australian Water Brokers Association president Andrew Martin said “it’s hard to see how we can have an informed market when we have no detail about the government’s trading volume or price or entitlement type”.

“No other market players are allowed to justify nondisclosure on the basis of not signalling the price they are paying, so this seems like double standards from the government,” he said.

While the water tender is shrouded in secrecy, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last week directed the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to investigate the transparency of supermarket pricing “to ensure Australians are paying a fair price for their groceries”.

He also handed consumer group Choice $1.1 million of taxpayers’ money to “provide price transparency and comparison reports on a quarterly basis for three years”.

NSW Farmers water task force chair Richard Bootle said the federal government claimed “to demand transparency when it comes to supermarket pricing, but his government is not being transparent when it comes to taking productive water away from farmers”.

“Every single megalitre taken out of the consumptive pool reduces the amount of food that farmers can grow, putting more and more pressure on our national food security,” Mr Bootle said.

Federal opposition water spokeswoman Perin Davey said the government was “hypocritically once again calling for pricing transparency from supermarkets, but denies the public transparency on the price of water”.

The pricing failure comes despite federal Water Minister Tanya Plibersek gaining Greens and crossbench Senate support in December to pass the Water Amendment (Restoring Our Rivers) Act 2023, which included a raft of reforms on improving water market transparency and accountability.

Ms Plibersek made repeated claims in the lead-up to the legislation being passed that “it is imperative that trust and transparency are restored to the management and delivery of water market information”.

“We want to ensure that the markets are fair for buyers and sellers, that there is clear information,” she said.

The tender is the Albanese government’s first foray into the water market, where it hopes to buy 41,100 megalitres of NSW and Queensland entitlements to boost the Basin’s environmental flows.

Irrigators are concerned the lack of transparency on the water tender does not bode well for basin communities facing further federal buyouts of up to 450,000 megalitres by December 2027.

To date the only details DCCEEW bureaucrats have lodged on the Austender website are the names of irrigators and corporations and the amounts they were paid.

For example the Austender site states the AWARE Water Group sold $6.24 million of water to the Commonwealth, but failed to detail from where in the Basin it was sourced, simply listing the company’s address as Melbourne.

Perpetual Trust Corporate Limited sold another $8.8 million of water on behalf of at least one of its members, with the Austender site listing it as based in Sydney.

Even when irrigators have been named, giving an indication of where they live, no details of the volume of water sold or entitlement type are given.

Namoi irrigator Jono Phelps sold six parcels of water shares to the federal government for just over $12 million.

But there is no detail of volume nor entitlement type – high, general or supplementary water shares.

It means irrigators are unable to determine what the Commonwealth – the biggest player in the market – is paying. It also means taxpayers have no idea if they are paying above-market rates.