Feds snap up $55.5 million worth of irrigators’ water

The Albanese government has splashed out millions to buy 33 parcels of irrigators’ water entitlements, through its first tender. See who sold and how much.

Peter HuntRural journalist

@PHuntAgri

2 min read

January 25, 2024 - 3:00PM

The Weekly Times

It’s pouring in Canberra, where Federal Water Minister Tanya Plibersek is overseeing the government’s first water tender that has locked in contracts to buy $55.5 million of irrigators’ water entitlements. Picture: Martin Ollman

The Albanese government has locked in contracts to buy $55.5 million of irrigators’ water, as it forges ahead with its first tender to snap up 41,100 megalitres to boost the Murray Darling Basin’s environment flows.

The biggest winner out of the water tender, which began in March last year, is Namoi irrigator John Phelps, who has sold six lots of his entitlements to the federal government for just over $12 million.

Hamblin Pastoral at Narrabri sold another $9.36m of Namoi water to the government, while Perpetual Trustees sold $8.8m on behalf of at least one of its members and the AWARE Water Group sold $6.24m of entitlements – but no details were given on where the water was sourced.

The 33 water purchases published on the government’s AusTender website to date simply state the name of the seller and the amount paid.

Irrigators must wait until the trades are lodged on the NSW Water Register to discover the volume of entitlements sold and price per megalitre paid by the Commonwealth.

A Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water spokesman said “the department started accepting offers to sell water in the relevant catchments to help ‘Bridge the Gap’ from August 2023.

“The department started publishing contracts on AusTender in November 2023. Contract negotiations remain ongoing.”

Why the trades have not started appearing on the NSW Water Register remains a mystery, given water brokers told The Weekly Times conveyancing usually takes only four to six weeks.

Analysis of the trades shows the Commonwealth purchased:

$27.34m of water from Namoi irrigators

About $22m on the NSW Murray (which is likely to include those marked as “unknown”)

At least $6.1m on the Lachlan

Federal opposition water spokeswoman Perin Davey said “when it comes to programs which drive up the cost of food, increasing inflation and are driving down productivity, buybacks are right up there as water is taken out of production.

“It is outrageous that the government thinks it is OK to keep Australian taxpayers in the dark whilst it thinks that it is fine for the Prime Minister to repeatedly lie about key policy decisions like tax cuts.

“The information the government has released today gives us no more information than telling us how many dollars individuals received. But no information about price per ML, total ML per valley or type of product purchased.

“If anything, they’ve given us the wrong information. Individuals should not be outed, but the government should be transparent about how much it has recovered to date in each valley towards the Bridge the Gap target and for how much.

“The should also let us know what their total budget is for water buybacks. How much will they spend on increasing our grocery prices?”