Murray Darling Basin rush: $210m of irrigators’ water purchased in six weeks

Irrigators have sold $35.6 million dollars worth of water to the government this week, bringing the six week total to $210m. See the list of who sold water and for how much.

Federal Water Minister Tanya Plibersek has overseen a $210 million rush to buy water in the lead-up to the May 3 federal election.

The sale of another $35.6 million of irrigators’ water to the federal government was announced on Sunday and Monday of this week, bringing total purchases over the past six weeks to $210m.

The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water’s Austender website published 73 water purchasing contracts worth $89m – from March 1 to April 14, which came on top of the $121m buyback deal the government struck with Duxton Water on March 5.

The recent rush to announce water purchases to boost Murray Darling Basin environmental flows, have come in the lead-up to a May 3 federal election in which Labor is trying to win over South Australian and Green-leaning voters.

The last six weeks’ of announcements sits in stark contrast to the $14.1m the government announced in the last six months of 2024.

Topping the list of this week’s purchases was Queensland-based Trinity Agriculture, the Trustee for D & K Armstrong Water Trust, which sold $17.84m of water to the government.

Other big sales announced at the start of this week include:

$3.7m of entitlements sold by P & W Booth of Lake Albert, NSW (near Wagga).

$1.963m locked in by DM Gleeson of Calimo NSW

$1.57m sold off by the Tippett of Torquay Victoria.

Last month Duxton Water also sold $10.85m of water to the Commonwealth, which appears to be in addition its $121.3m sale of 30,614 megalitres of Murray Darling Basin high and general security water entitlements.

DCCEEW is yet to reveal the type and volume of entitlements it has purchased, but federal Water Minister Tanya Plibersek recently stated “we are delivering 286 gigalitres of additional environmental water in three years compared to just 2GL delivered by the Liberals and Nationals in a decade”.

Yet the Minister’s own department’s website stated that “as at March 2025, 132.1GL has been secured towards the 450GL target”, which included “78.2 GL of over-recoveries”, which was purchased as part of the 2008 to 2012 buyback scheme.

Water brokers said the government has being paying a premium to secure irrigators’ and corporate investors’ water for the environment.

But Australian Water Brokers Association president Andrew Martin said water entitlement prices had stabilised and prices were now “at levels lower than we understood had been paid in the buyback”.