A Murray-Darling Basin water advocacy group says $100 million in federal funding for Aboriginal water entitlements is expected to lose about 30 per cent of its value before it’s spent.

The Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations group wants traditional owners to be given control over the funding to restore ancestral sites.

What’s next? The federal government says it is taking “proactive measures” to make sure its water purchasing programs don’t drive up water prices.

It’s a cold winter morning on the banks of the Murray River — or Milloo, as it is called in the Wati Wati language — and about 80 people have gathered under the shelter of a colonial-style inn.

They’ve travelled from across the Murray-Darling Basin, from upstream in Wiradjuri country in Dubbo and from downstream Ngarrindjeri country in the South Australian Coorong to voice their frustration at what they say is the federal government’s failure to deliver water justice for Aboriginal people.

Among them is Ngarrindjeri man and chairman of the Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations (MLDRIN) water advocacy group Grant Rigney.

Seven months ago, the government passed its Restoring Our Rivers Bill, increasing the funding available for Aboriginal Water Entitlement projects to $100 million.

Mr Rigney said he was frustrated that the purchasing power of the hard-won funding may already have begun to fall as a result of a separate federal water project.

On July 15, the federal government opened a round of water buybacks with the aim of buying 70 gigalitres of water from willing sellers in the southern Murray-Darling Basin to return to the environment under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

The problem was, that water purchase was driving up water prices before the government had entered the market to purchase water for Aboriginal Water Entitlement projects, Mr Rigney said.

“[The price of] water is going to go through the roof,” he said.

“And whatever purchasing that’s done through the Aboriginal Water Entitlement could be potentially 30 per cent less water than what they would have got eight months ago for that same costing of $100 million.”

MLDRIN has been campaigning for almost 20 years for the government to allocate funds for Aboriginal water purchases.

In 2018, it secured an initial $40 million commitment for Aboriginal Water Entitlements from the former Coalition federal government, which has remained unspent for more than five years.

The funding pool was topped up to $100 million by the federal Labor government in December last year, but has not been spent.

Wati Wati man Brendan Kennedy said the government had “ignored” MLDRIN’s pleas to “hand the money over”.

“MLDRIN was the architect and the instigator of the original $40 million and during the five years [since it was announced] ”¦ has been working on proposals and models for that money to be distributed to First Nation people,” he said.

“The 24 nations [that are members of MLDRIN] have been ignored, circumvented, and we have been denied the opportunity to have the control and say over that money and how that allows us to start to make some inroads into water ownership.”

Mr Kennedy said Aboriginal water entitlements would allow traditional owners to pump water into ancestral sites that were not receiving water under environmental water allocations.

He said one of those sites was Margooya Lagoon, where Wati Wati people had long been calling for “control, decision making, ownership and delivering water into our site”.

According to analysis by water trading firm Waterfind, the value of water across the southern Murray-Darling Basin has increased by nearly 5 per cent over the past month, since the federal government announced the latest buyback round in June.

In one water trading zone, the Victorian Lower Murray, water prices increased more than 7 per cent over the same period.

First Nations groups hold about 40 per cent of Australian land through native title claims, yet own and control less than 0.2 per cent of the country’s water.

Waterfind chief executive Tom Rooney said as supply continued to tighten in the water market, a 20 or 30 per cent increase in the price of water was possible.

The federal government has not yet started buying water for the Aboriginal Entitlement Program.

However, Mr Rooney said even if the government started buying water at the end of the current buyback round, the price increases will leave them with less water to purchase.

“Well, of course, their $100 million allocated would buy them less water than it would have done today, or [than] it would have done when the announcements occurred in December 2023,” he said.

Australian National University geography professor Jamie Pittock said water buybacks represented the best value for money for the federal government, compared to other water-saving measures like infrastructure projects.

But he said more money needed to be set aside for Aboriginal water entitlements.

“That $100 million won’t go so far,” Mr Pittock said.

“The 40-odd Indigenous nations in the Basin, they currently hold about 0.2 per cent of surface water entitlements [in the Basin], and clearly deserve access to more water.”

Collectively, Aboriginal people make up more than five per cent of the Basin’s population.

With the water market valued at $32.3 billion by research firm Aither in 2023, a $100 million investment in Aboriginal water entitlements would increase Aboriginal water ownership to about 0.5 per cent of the market.

This article appeared in the Narrandera Argus, 22 August 2024.