FEDERAL Water Minister Penny Wong is rushing to buy more water from the Murray Darling Basin's drought-stressed irrigators.
Yesterday Senator Wong announced the Federal Government was bringing forward $320 million to buy more irrigators' water to revive environmental flows.
"So that will bring in total, by the end of this financial year, the Governments expected expenditure on water to $1.3 billion,'' Senator Wong said.
"We have spent just under $947 million so far, and that has bought 612 gigalitres from memory and that information on water already purchased is public and people can extrapolate from that.
"We buy water where we see most value and that's assessed after advice to the Department from independent scientists as well as the Departments own analysis, and drawing on the work that has already been done.
"But in terms of the benefit for South Australia what we should remember is in the 2008-09 year, some 62 per cent of the water the Commonwealth held was in fact utilised on sites in South Australia. Now that may change obviously, depending on what the advice from scientists is and also where the water is available.''
In October The Weekly Times spoke to water brokers who had been told by a Government-commissioned consultant the Commonwealth was due to re-enter the water market at the end of the month.
The brokers said the consultant was trying to determine market prices for irrigators' water entitlements following the Federal Government's withdrawal from the market last June, following the completion of its last round of purchases.
