North Victorian irrigators set up their own carryover review

Northern Victorian Irrigation Communities chairman, Nathalia prime lamb and crop producer Nick James, says its hoped to present the findings to the State Government.

"Carryover hasn't been reviewed for the past seven years, and I think there's room to improve it," Mr James said.

"We are getting some modelling done, to see how it should look."

In the lead up to last year's Victoiran election, the State Opposition promised to look at carryover.

Read more: Coalition looks to irrigation carryover review, if elected

NVIC has described itself as a community group with intentions to keep healthy rivers and profitable communities in the GMID.

Mr James questioned claims speculators made up only 10 per cent of the market

"How do they come up with that? I'd like to see the modelling on it," Mr James said.

Fellow committee member Nathalia dairy farmer Mark Bryant said he was also concerned about speculators, who could end up as price setters.

"The big traders have bought huge amounts of water, to see what the market does next year," Mr Bryant said.

He said he was also concerned that when consumptive water was spilled, it went to the environment, but wasn't taken off that account.

"We are carrying over water, but when we have a spill, the environment gets the benefit of it, and we lose, it bad luck," he said.

"When they have a spill, they don't lose that water - they get to carry it over, and the spill doesn't come off their allocation.

"I don't think it hurts to look back and review a lot of these rules and say, did we get it right?"

Water shares, bulk and environmental entitlements give holders a share of space in the dams, used to supply their water.

The entitlements provide the right to carry over unused allocations, between seasons.

Rules are deemed necessary to ensure water carried over doesn't lock up space in the dams, needed for inflows to support allocations to all entitlements.

Mr Bryant said the group wished to negotiate a better outcome, for all users.

"Let's see if we can all have a win, out of this," he said.

'We're not here to take the water off the environment - 100 per cent, the environment has to have its water, no doubt about that."

But he said the current high water prices, which this week softened slightly to $470/Megalitre, were being felt, right throughout the community.

"We are seeing high prices are hurting so many people.

"We are seeing all our communities hurting, our local butcher, the motorbike shop, the auto-electrician, whoever it is, they are bleeding as much as the cocky down the road," Mr Bryant said.

Mr James said the group would also like to see more transparency, around water trades.

"We are not talking about getting information about water that was sold two or three weeks ago

"With modern technology, we can get the information about the trade, on the day, who has bought water, who has sold water, for how much.

'We can keep track of water sales, so we, as business people, can work out whether we need to be getting in, or out.

"At the moment, it seems to be all about speculators, with no skin in the agricultural game, who have nothing to lose."

A spokeswoman for Water Minister Lisa Neville said the State Government wanted to support farmers and irrigators, to use the water market to deal with changes in commodity prices, climate and seasonal conditions.

"Carryover gives all water entitlement holders - irrigators, urban water corporations and environmental water holders - flexibility to hold, use or trade the water allocated to their entitlements when it is of greatest value to their business," the spokeswoman said.

"We are monitoring what is happening in the market and working with regional agencies to strengthen further our water sharing arrangements and make sure trading rules in northern Victoria are appropriate given physical and operational constraints."

She said there had been considerable effort put in place, to ensure carryover rules were equitable.

The rules had been developed and reviewed with irrigators and other entitlement holders to give them the tools needed to manage their risks and to prepare for shortages due to drought.

It was essential irrigators, and other water users had a stable framework that enabled them, and that carryover remained in place.

The Government has released an updated Water Market Trends report which contained factual information on how irrigators and other entitlement holders are using carryover and trade to support their water use.

Irrigators were using carryover to manage their risks and their water availability in drier years.

After the wet year in 2016-17, 718GL was carried over by current irrigators into 2017-18.

With drier seasonal conditions in 2017-18, this volume was drawn down by 333GL, with 385GL carried over into 2018-19.

Most of the carryover into 2018-19 by private individuals was in the accounts of active irrigators in the GMW districts (294GL).

Another 39GL was carried over by GMW diverters, and 52GL by Sunraysia irrigators.

At the commencement of the 2018-19 season, 50pc of carryover was held privately, with 82pc of that held by active irrigators, mainly by G-MW district irrigators (76pc).