Water tender’s sky-high prices revealed

Federal Water Minister Tanya Plibersek has paid a massive premium to buy water out of the Namoi Valley. See the details.

Water Minister Tanya Plibersek and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese have paid a record price for water that rarely delivers. Picture: Martin Ollman

The Albanese Government has paid a massive premium for water for the environment out of the Northern Murray Darling Basin, falling well short of its 44.3 gigalitre recovery target.

A breakdown of the purchases shows Ms Plibersek’s bureaucrats were forced to pay a staggering $13,220 per megalitre of Namoi long-term diversion limit equivalence water – a measure of average annual yield.

The government locked in contracts to buy 9500ML of LTDLE Namoi water for $125.6m, whereas it bought 10,380ML off NSW Murray irrigators’ LTDLE for $33.2m – almost a quarter of the northern basin price.

Federal water tender results.

Opposition water spokeswoman Perin Davey said the government was now the “biggest cowboy” in the water market.

“We heard consistently when Labor was in opposition that the Coalition had bought ‘goanna’ water that was only available during floods. It now looks like, from the scant information available, the Labor Government has paid a massive premium for supplementary and unregulated water in Namoi which is rarely available,” she said.

Brokers said water in the northern Basin was very tightly held, which does not bode well for the government, given it will be under pressure to recover at least 100 gigalitres of the 450GL it intends to recover under its amended Basin Plan from the north.

Border Rivers Food and Fibre NSW vice-chair Brendan Griffiths said there was plenty of developed land in the northern basin, but not enough water to go round.

He said the 400ML cap on the class-C component of the standard NSW 972ML licence, introduced as part of new restrictions on flood plain harvesting, had led to the shortage.

“There’s no water that people aren’t using,” Mr Griffiths said.

However Ms Plibersek said the government would continue to work with Queensland and

NSW on water recovery options to secure the remaining northern basin 18.05GL shortfall.

After claiming last year that irrigators had offered to sell twice the volume needed under the bridging the gap tender, Ms Plibersek last week announced she had recovered just 26.25GL for $205 million.

National Irrigators’ Council chairman Jeremy Morton warned the federal government would have to pay much higher premiums, as it tried to strip another 450GL out of irrigation communities by December 2027.