The federal government will fund research into the best ways to improve transparency and reliability of water market information.
Ricegrowers’ Association of Australia president Jeremy Morton, Moulamein, said governments needed to do more, to educate irrigators about water trading.
“They need to assist irrigators understand this new market, this new world, we are living in, where water is a commodity and can be traded,” Mr Morton said.
And Southern Riverina Irrigators (SRI) chairman Graeme Pyle said farmers currently operated under a difficult trading regime, “where the smarties know what is going on, whereas some of us – with less time, or less time to get the skills - don’t,” Mr Pyle said. “We are not happy about that. SRI and other groups will be going out of their way to make sure water trading is transparent, and ensure people who have not got the ability to spend endless hours, negotiating funky carryover deals, funky water purchases and generally sharp practices in the water industry, get any domination.”
SRI and other groups will be going out of their way to make sure water trading is transparent.
- Graeme Pyle, Southern Riverina Irrigators chairman
But a spokeswoman for Water Minister Barnaby Joyce said because of the number of groups involved in authorising, processing and/or regulating a trade, prospective buyers or seller of water rights might need to check a number of different sources of information.
“The Department of Agriculture and Water Resources is currently working to consolidate this information as part of the Business Research and Innovation Initiative (BRII), to make it easier for irrigators and others to find the information they need in one place,” the spokeswoman said. Small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) had been asked to help ‘improve transparency and reliability of water market information.”
She said it was intended to utilise emerging digital platforms to improve the ease of access to water markets, increase market participation and improve community confidence.
The best proposals for the challenge would receive grants of up to $100,000 to test the feasibility of their ideas, over three months.
If successful, the SMEs may then go on to apply for up to $1 million to develop a prototype or proof of concept.
