Outcomes from 2007-08 Restoring the Balance in the Murray-Darling Basin Program (water entitlement purchasing)
Background
On 26 February 2008, the Minister for Climate Change and Water, announced a public tender process, with the Australian Government allocating $50 million to purchase water in the 2007-08 financial year. This was the first ever Federal Government water buyback tender process and it closed on 16 May 2008. At the close of the tender, the Australian Government had agreed to pursue approximately 35GL worth of water entitlements, to a value of $53 million.
The information provided on this website is updated regularly to reflect the actual purchases that are currently being pursued by the Government, and trades that have already been settled.
The process to transfer the water entitlements from the seller to the Australian Government has resulted in a number of sales either failing due diligence checks1, or being withdrawn by the seller.
All sell offers received in the 2007-08 tender process were assessed against their capacity to provide water for high value environmental assets and on achieving value for money. The criteria used were: the availability of high value environmental assets that could be watered by the entitlement; whether the assets required additional water; whether the water could be delivered to the assets; and the price of the offer.
Charts 1 to 4 below show aggregated information on the number and volume of offers received and offers currently being pursued by the Australian Government in the Murray-Darling Basin. Chart 5 shows a price index of pursued offers and rejected offers for general and high security entitlement types in the New South Wales Murray River catchment. We are currently unable to provide further price information on other catchments because contracts are still being finalised.
This web site will be updated to include more price information once all contracts are exchanged.
Water purchasing catchments in the Murray-Darling Basin+*
- MDB catchments
+The water purchasing catchments on this map are based on the Murray-Darling Basin River catchments with modifications to catchments along the Murray River to accommodate trading practicalities.
*To protect the privacy and confidentiality of individual sellers, purchasing information in catchments with less than four offers being pursued have been combined with information from nearby catchments with similar characteristics.
| Catchment | Entitlement type | Entitlements issued (ML) | 2007-08 Government purchases (ML) | 2007-08 Purchases as a proportion of issued entitlements (%) | Long term reliability of entitlements | Water available for the environment (expected long term annual average (ML)) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NSW: Gwydir Regulated | General security | 509,500 | 2,916 | 0.57 | 0.36 | 1,050 |
| NSW: Macquaire-Bogan Regulated | General security | 632,428 | 3,769 | 0.60 | 0.42 | 1,583 |
| NSW: Lachlan | General and High security | 619,319 | 7,514 | 1.21 | General security (0.42) High security (1.0) |
3,330 |
| NSW: Murray | General security | 1,670,508 | 5,768 | 0.35 | 0.80 | 4,144 |
| VIC: Campaspe River System | High reliability | 37,118 | 635 | 1.71 | 0.95 | 603 |
| VIC: Goulburn River System | Low reliability | 436,890 | 370 | 0.08 | 0.46 | 170 |
| VIC: Goulburn River System | High reliability | 990,053 | 650 | 0.07 | 0.95 | 618 |
| VIC: Murray | Low reliability | 302,635 | 353 | 0.12 | 0.41 | 145 |
| VIC Murray and Ovens | High reliability | 1,212,426 | 5,654 | 0.47 | 0.95 | 5,371 |
| SA: Murray River System | High security | 514,500 | 427 | 0.08 | 0.90 | 384 |
| Total | 6,925,377 | 28,056 | 0.41 | 17,398 |
| State | Expenditure | |
|---|---|---|
| NSW | $23,839,097 | |
| Vic | $15,352,528 | |
| SA | $1,015,350 | |
| Total |
|
| Entitlement type | Expenditure | Average expenditure/ML++ | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High Security | $16,889,353 | $2,203 | |
| NSW General Security and Vic Low Reliability Water Share | $23,317,622 | $1,144 | |
| Total |
|
++Includes water entitlement purchases from different catchments across the Murray-Darling Basin. The actual prices paid for each entitlement type will vary because of market factors such as the long term reliability of these water entitlements.
Review of the 2007-08 water entitlement purchase round
In June 2008 the Department began reviewing the 2007-08 water entitlement purchase round. A consultant was engaged to conduct an independent assessment of the program, drawing on feedback provided by a Stakeholder Consultative Committee and eight regional consultation workshops. The final report of the independent assessment has now been publicly released. The Stakeholder Consultative Committee has made a statement regarding the 2007-08 water entitlement purchase program and the Department has responded to the findings of the consultant's report.
- Review of 2007-08 water entitlement purchases report and the Department's response
- Review of the Government's water purchase program released - media release
- Stakeholder Consultative Committee statement and fact sheet
* NOTE: Most individual catchment pages on this web site list examples of, and include links to, information on high value environmental assets including Ramsar wetlands and Living Murray Icon sites. The Australian Wetlands Database can also be used to search for information on Australia's Ramsar wetlands, and the nationally important wetlands listed in A Directory of Important Wetlands in Australia.
1 The process whereby the solicitor acting on behalf of the Australian Government validates the information provided by the seller and checks for any issues that may affect the value for money of the offer
More information
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