The MDBA has been working with River Murray governments to collate and prepare background information on the historical and current operation and management arrangements for Menindee Lakes and the associated challenges and opportunities in operating and managing the Menindee Lakes into the future. A technical review and issues paper have been released for information to inform the Basin Plan Review.
The Department are reviewing the role of the Inspector-General of Water Compliance, to ensure it continues to add value to the management
of the Murray Darling Basin.
This review is a requirement of the Water Act 2007 and must be completed by 30 June 2026.
Independent reviewers have been appointed. A survey and or submissions are due by 25 February 2026.
On the 12th December, a national Water Minister's meeting and Murray Darling Basin Water Minister's meeting were held - these are known as MinCo meetings.
The national meeting, discussed the preparation and next steps of a renewed National Water Initiative and progress on water efficiency standards, as well as, risks pertaining to increased demands on water including water for data centres (in our view any new demands for
water should be found from new sources, or through existing markets). The communique is available here.
The MDB meeting, discussed progress on the Basin Plan and concerns regarding SDLAM projects. There was no direction mention of constraints,
however some discussion on a strategic approach to SDLAM projects. The communiqué is available here.
There have been several concerns raised regarding the Federal Government’s decision to purchase additional water from farmers that go beyond
the water recovery required to ‘bridge the gap’ to reduce water usage to Sustainable Diversion Limits (SDLs), in the Murray-Darling Basin
Plan. The concerns relate to the effectiveness or need for additional water acquisition, with questions on how the Government’s actions are
contributing to policy outcomes, meeting value for taxpayers’ money, and consider the growing evidence that signals alternatives approach to
‘just adding water’ are needed to enhance environmental outcomes around the Basin.
This Report by NIC, provides a preliminary assessment of the Federal Government purchases of additional water under “the 450 GL” program of
the Plan. [...]
The Independent Panel reviewing the Water for Environment Special Account (WESA) has released its third and likely final report today.
The report focuses on the funding requirements of the WESA to implement the additional 450 GL of environmental water and constraints. It found, that there is a funding shortfall of $1.3 billion for the 450 GL program and that it is uncertain if the
full target can be achieved. It could not assess financial status of constraints beyond 2026 as no estimates of total costs are available and noted the remaining funds are sufficient for the expected expenses until 2026. No assessment on the Sustaining
Basin Communities funding was undertaken as no outputs were measured, although they did highlight the need for more explicit guidelines
on what is expected to be achieved.
This week the Government's proposed Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act 2025 Reform Bills (six of) were referred to the Senate Environment and Communications Committee for review. The Minister for the Environment and Water, Murray Watt says the Australian Parliament
must make a choice - support reform that will protect our treasured natural environment and drive productivity, or keep the broken, outdated laws we have which are failing business, the environment and our community. However Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said “The
Albanese Government’s proposed environment bill will make things worse for nature and the climate. It will take environment protections backwards while fast tracking approvals for business.
Submissions are open now and close on 4 December 2025 with the Committee due to report March next year.
IGWC released the 2023-2024 metering report card, providing an overview of how Basin States are progressing national metering standards. The
report looks provides a snapshot of the progression towards AS4747 meters with NSW increasing their coverage of AS4747 meters, just behind
Victoria which has the highest number. The report card does highlight the areas where NSW and QLD are still using estimates for water take,
although these percentages are expected to decline with the roll-out of floodplain harvesting metering which has only just began.
It is important to note that the report card refers to productive/commercial extraction of water, and therefore does not report on
environmental water measurement.
This update relates to persons or classes of people required to report water market information under the Australian Government water market
regulation - this can be IIOs and water intermediaries.
DCCEEW are seeking feedback on the Exposure Drafts for the proposed Water Amendment (Water Markets Information) Regulations 2026
(Regulations) and the Water Market Data Standards. These form the final pieces of the water market reform roadmap and are due for
implementation in 2026.
Exposure drafts and a survey for feedback are provided on the webpage.
NIC has completed our own internal review into the Murray Darling Basin Plan, which is a series of papers addressing the key themes of
the 2024 Early Insights paper using the recently published “Triple Crown of Water Reform Framework” to highlight possible next
steps for the Basin Plan. We hope to help forge a future pathway that embraces the paradigm shift needed for the Basin that is more
about a 'plan of management' than the current ‘water recovery plan’ focus. The review addresses; regulatory design, sustainable water limits, climate change, environment, agriculture and community and contemporary issues.
We encourage stakeholders to reach out to discuss these papers, the evidence, our findings and recommendations.
The 2025 Ricardo Water Markets Report was published this week. The report has really useful data on water markets, including on Cth water
buybacks. Worth a look!
Some quick facts:
This week, Dairy Australia released the first of its kind report using new independent, evidence-based, modelling has found continued
water buybacks under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan (MDBP) pose a severe, disproportionate, and avoidable risk to the entire dairy supply
chain and the region communities they sustain.
The results are clear and alarming: water buybacks, as currently proposed, are not just a policy tool – they threaten the viability of an
entire industry. Under two plausible buyback scenarios - the recovery of 302GL and 683GL - the analysis shows:
* reduced water availability
* significant increases in water prices
* sharp declines in farmgate milk production
* farm viability risks
* heightened risk of dairy processor closures, and
* community and supply chain impact.
“Holding Ground in Uncertainty: Insights for Australian Agriculture in 2050” is a deep and wide-ranging exploration of the
futures that might await our sector—and the strategic choices we can make today to shape them.
This expanded edition includes 19 contributions from leading researchers and practitioners, exploring themes such as:
CISRO released their first-ever national stocktake of our $800 billion food system, which feeds around 100 million people – including 27 million Australians – with food produced by 100,000 farmers. The report maps a number of key challenges in the food system and seeks to calculate hidden costs. The report identified three key steps to guide a systems-based approach for transformation:
DCCEEW today released the Exposure Draft of the Water Markets Intermediaries Code (the Code) and an Overview of the draft are now available for consultation. On this page you will be able to submit your feedback on the Exposure Draft. The consultation will be open until 11.59pm on Sunday 6 April 2025. The Exposure Draft incorporates feedback from the Policy Position Paper consultation in November-December 2024.
DCCEEW today released their Final policy position paper on the water market intermediaries trust accounting and code exemptions, the final
position to inform the future exposure regulations.
We will review this with interest given the concerns raised regarding the likely impacts and expectations on some intermediaries.
DCCEEW have released their Final policy position paper on the Water Market Information, including pre-trade data adn obligations for registering trades. This information sets the policy positions to be incorporated into the regulations in coming months, for implementation in a staged approach over 2026 and 2027. For more information visit the Department webpage. Click the link to see the document.
Minister Plibersek tabled the Australia Audit Office's review of the 2023 Strategic Purchases for Bridging the Gap, which you may recall the Inspector General recently found flaws in governance and managing conflicts.
The report identified steps were taken to address earlier deficiencies and that processes stacked up. What was interesting to read in
the detail were questions and recommendations about the purpose of these purchases towards the overall policy outcomes, which you will hear
more from NIC about this area
On Monday, Prime Minister Albanese announced the 2024 Annual Report on Closing the Gap and the 2025 workplan.
We note, that for 2025 actions the priorities will be to develop a First Nations Water Strategy to inform Commonwealth actions under the proposed National Water Agreement. As well as, the Commonwealth continues to work with jurisdictions and a Coalition of Peaks to develop the
inland waters target to measure progress towards securing First Nation peoples interest in inland water bodies.
Under Objective 15 there are current targets for land and sea, but the inland target was not nationally agreed.
We hope to have a Member Policy update on this in the coming month.
The MDBA released the Constraints Roadmap today which outlines the new framework for cross-border delivery of the Basin Constraints program for another 10-years. The MDBA stating that “The Roadmap provides a guide for governments and communities in navigating the complex reforms required to relax constraints. The findings reflect the MDBA’s view on how to move forward. We hope that they are embraced by governments. Governments are the ultimate decision-makers on moving forward in relaxing constraints.” […]
The Inspector General this week released their 2022-2023 Murray Darling Basin
Compliance Report. The
report states that "this compliance performance report provides a sample of common compliance activities metrics for each Basin State
which will be incorporated into progressively broader reporting under a Basin-wide compliance performance reporting scheme. It is also
anticipated that future reporting on compliance activities will be at the water resource plan level."
The report provides an overview of the different approaches and outcomes to compliance in each of the Basin States. NSW reported licence
holder numbers not metered percentage (with a target of 95% underway), SA reported 98.2% of take was metered, Queensland report 74% of take was metered, in Victoria 98% was metered (and 76% telemetered), no details for ACT. Victoria has the largest number of statutory officers, despite have the highest percentage of telemetered meters. Victoria also had the highest number of
investigations open and closed and warnings, whereas SA had the highest number and greatest value of fines.
DCCEEW recently released their progress assessment of the water market reforms. This document outlines the steps taken to implement the ACCC recommendations and highlights the significant change still to navigate through water market reforms as required by the Restoring Our Rivers 2023 amendment. Unfortunately, the progress update provides no assessment of the costs and benefits of these reforms, rather forges ahead. Current consultation include Water Market Decisions, Water Market Pre-Trade data and the final policy position for the Intermediaries Code via the Department’s website.
Following ongoing discussions with DCCEEW about accountability and transparency of progress on the Murray Darling Basin Plan, our attention was drawn to this new resource to track the progress. Whilst it doesn't go all the way with providing the much-needed transparency, it does provide a visual examples of the progress, and remaining effort. Its worth a look.
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