THE South Australian Government is bidding against Victorian and NSW irrigators for water.

Brokers have told The Weekly Times the SA Government is willing to pay a premium to get temporary water.

"They're telling us they want parcels of at least 50 megalitres and will pay a premium of $20 to $40 (a megalitre) above the market price," one broker said.

SA Water is paying about $350 a megalitre for allocation water, compared to the market prices that range from $300.

The SA Government announced last month it had already purchased 30,000 megalitres of allocation or "temporary" water from irrigators across the Murray Darling Basin.

But a spokeswoman for SA Water Minister Karlene Maywald said more was being purchased to deliver crucial supplies to SA irrigators with permanent plantings.

Yet for most of this season, the SA Government has capped irrigators' allocations at 15 per cent, diverting additional inflows allocated to SA into a contingency reserve to meet Adelaide's needs in 2009-10. Only last week, the SA Government raised irrigators' allocations to 18 per cent, while Victorian Murray irrigators have been given a 33 per cent allocation.

Senior government sources say the SA Government may eventually have to buy 65,000 megalitres to meet its needs.

Victorian Farmers Federation Water Council chairman Richard Anderson said it was absurd that the SA Government was taking water from irrigators with one hand and then buying more to hand it back again.

Meanwhile, the SA Government is still in dispute with the Murray Darling Basin Authority over 70,000 megalitres of water the NSW and Victorian governments say is owed to them.

Under the sharing arrangements, SA was granted the right to borrow 148,000 megalitres last season (2007-08), on the basis it was repaid to the upstream states as allocations were made in the new season, from July 1 last year.

SA Government officials say they have already repaid half the 148,000 megalitre imbalance.

The MDBA has appointed an independent reviewer to sort out the accounts and make a final determination.