NSW irrigators say a further 450GL water recovery won't leave much for farmers

NSWIC chief executive Claire Miller said the new federal Water Minister Tanya Plibersek had already acknowledged that delivering the extra 450GL would be difficult.

Under the Basin plan, an additional 450GL of water is to be recovered for the environment through what's called efficiency measures, to be completed by June 2024.

Ms Miller said the Plan's intended outcomes for SA's Lower Lakes and Coorong, were already being met, even in the severe 2019 drought, while 2100GL had already recovered under the Basin Plan.

"It highlights the need to change course on the Basin Plan, away from the focus on simplistic volumes of recovery as the only measure of success, towards whether the Plan is delivering what was intended, that is, more robust ecosystem resilience and sustainable diversion limits," Ms Miller said.

The first review of the Water for the Environment Special Account, in 2020, found that recovering 450GL would cost at least three times more than the budgeted $1.575 billion, she said.

"The second review of the Special Account is expected to reinforce the findings of the first," Ms Miller said.

The Productivity Commission highlighted the 450GL could be recovered but be unusable due to delivery constraints, such as needing to negotiate voluntary flood easements with thousands of landowners.

"We are advocating for the 450GL funds to be reinvested into complementary measures, to directly address environmental challenges such as feral species and habitat loss, and improve biodiversity and conservation outcomes," Ms Miller said.

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Meanwhile, federal opposition Agriculture spokesman David Littleproud accused the government of trying to reignite the 'water wars'.

He called on the government to ensure neutral social and economic assessment criteria were applied to the recovery of the 450GL.

"It shows an utter disrespect and disregard to the trauma, to the hurt that those Basin communities have endured through this plan," Mr Littleproud said.

"And now we have a government that's going against the very plan that they put in place.

"I know that intimately, because I was the one that negotiated with the states on the neutrality test on that for years - that was akin to getting peace in the Middle East."

Nationals Nicholls MP Sam Birrell said he had been elected, in part, because voters in the seat were concerned about water, which was the lifeblood of the economy.

"And a lot of it's gone under the Plan," Mr Birrell said.

"The extra 450GL has to go through a socio economic neutrality test."

While farmers might want to sell the water, once it was gone, so did the food it would have grown.

"There is a lot of environmental water in the pool and ripping this extra 450GL out will hurt the economy and hurt society," he said.

Mallee Nationals MP Anne Webster said her electorate had lost three quarters of its dairy farms, which relied on water.

"It became unaffordable and it was just never going to work," Dr Webster said.

"We now have a patchwork of farms where people can't actually put water back on that farm. "

She called for no more water to come from farms or for government buybacks.

Ms Plibersek said the government was committed to delivering the Basin Plan in full.

"It's what we signed up for and I believe in keeping our commitments," she said.

"The destination is clear, but I am very open to how we get there.

"We're going to be consulting widely with stakeholders."

She said she wanted practical solutions that provided water for the environment, that supported regional economies and were good value for taxpayer's money.