2025 Groundwater Rights Purchase Info Session

Thanks for joining us. My name is Racheline and I'm from the Water Infrastructure and Investment Division at the Commonwealth Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

I'm here to talk about our recently launched tender to purchase permanent groundwater rights in the northern Murray-Darling Basin.

This is a summary of the information sessions that were held in the region during the week of the 7^th to 11^th of July, and the purpose is to provide information about the tender so you can determine if you're eligible, and if so, how you might participate.

Before I talk about the actual tender itself, I'll just provide a little bit of context about the Basin Plan.

The Australian Government is committed to delivering the Basin Plan in full, and the plan is about securing a healthy, sustainable river for future generations, protecting our communities and ensuring the entire basin system is on a sustainable path going forward. Part of the plan involves setting limits on the amount of water that can be taken from rivers and aquifers to ensure there's enough left to keep the system healthy and this is referred to as the sustainable diversion limits, or SDLs.

Strategic water purchasing is one of the ways that we recover water to bridge that gap between the historical diversion limits and the new sustainable diversion limits under the Basin Plan, and the way we go about doing this is set out in our published trading strategy that's on our website.

In 2023, we published the strategic water purchasing framework, which sets out our approach and in June last year, we published an addendum which sets out how we'll go about purchasing over the 24-25 financial year andthis tender was flagged in that addendum.

Moving on to the actual tender itself. It opened on the 25^th of June, and it will run through till the 27^th of August and It closes at 11am on the 27^th of August and through this tender, we're seeking to purchase up to 3.2 gigalitres, so 3,200 megalitres of permanent water rights in the Queensland, upper Condamine Alluvium. And I'll talk in a minute about what we mean by the upper Condamine Alluvium.

There's two parts, because there's two different areas with different sustainable diversion limits, and therefore different gaps to bridge. In the tributaries, we're looking through this tender to recover 2.95 gigalitres, 2,950 megalitres of water. We've previously recovered 0.1 gigalitre about 100 megalitres of water, through previous tenders, but we still have 2,950 megalitres to recover.

In the Central Condamine Alluvium, we're looking to recover 250 megalitres we've previously recovered quite a bit of water through purchase, so a bit over 35,000 megalitres, 35 gigalitres, through previous tenders, but we still got 250 megalitres to recover through this tender.

I should just point out that we're only seeking to purchase water from the Upper Condamine Alluvium. We're not looking to purchase water from other aquifers, such as the Basalts or the Great Artesian Basin and we're able to accept offers of one megalitre, nominal volume or more for this tender.

I'll talk a bit about the tributaries area, so you can see it covers quite an area and there's lots of components and you'll see there's some shaded, coloured areas around Oakey, Allora and Warwick in these areas there are water allocation areas around Oakey Creek Alluvium, Dalrymple Creek Alluvium and Cunningham Alluvium. That's where our water allocations are tradable, independent to land, and these are the areas where we've already recovered that 100 megalitres of water through previous tenders.

For this tender we've broadened out the scope to cover the whole of the tributaries area, so all those areas shaded in brown are also eligible for this tender, and those areas are where we have water licences that are attached to land.

Moving on to the Central Condamine Alluvium, you can see it extends from down almost near Pratten up through Cecil Plains and Dalby up north. There's four different zones to the Central Condamine Alluvium, they're all eligible here for this tender and we're looking to recover a total of 250 megalitres across these areas.

So that's a bit about the tender itself.

I'll talk a little bit about how you can participate in the tender. The first step is to visit AusTender, www.tenders.gov.au and search for 'groundwater rights' and that will bring up our tender and note, if it looks like you need to pay to access AusTender, you shouldn't have to, so just check that you're going to the correct web address.

Once you find our tender on AusTender, you can download the ATM documents. You'll need to register on AusTender to download those documents and to submit a tender response that's done through an online tender response form. That's not actually through AusTender itself, we use a separate application called Tender 360 to submit that online tender response. Schedule One of the Approach to Market documentation has instructions on how to access Tender 360 so you click on a link in there that will take you to Tender 360. You need to register separately for Tender 360, once you've done that, you can log on and complete the online response form, and it's designed to be as user friendly as possible. It will walk you through the questions and the information you need to provide. You can save your progress and come back to it later. You can also have someone else fill out the tender response on your behalf, for example, a water broker or an agent.

When you click on that link, it will take you to this Tender 360 page. You can see down the bottom, there's a box there, Approach to Market for our groundwater tender. Sometimes we have multiple tenders open, so there'll be multiple boxes and if you click on that, it will take you through to the login page for Tender 360 and you can start your application.

And if you have any issues with AusTender or Tender 360 there are help desks for both of those applications. There are details in the Frequently Asked Questions on AusTender, and you can contact them for some help.

Speaking of Frequently Asked Questions, we've actually updated frequently asked questions that are part of our tender documentation on AusTender. We've updated those by an addendum to provide some additional information based on what we heard during the recent information sessions, and I'll go through some of the more commonly frequently asked questions here.

The first one is a series of questions around price. What price will the department pay for water rights? How should prices appear in the tender response? and what resources are available to help people make a decision determining a price?

The ATM invites water right owners to offer a minimum of one megalitre or more in nominal volume, and the price in dollars per megalitre at which they're prepared to permanently sell that nominated volume to the department. It's up to sellers to determine what price they're willing to accept. The Commonwealth doesn't routinely set a price for a voluntary open tender, and the department will be evaluating the value for money of each tender response, with price being one consideration.

Prices should be dollars per megalitre, exclusive of GST and inclusive of all relevant costs, for example, costs of complying with the Approach to Market. And it should be an offer of the final price that's acceptable to the tenderer. There are some resources available to provide guidance and support material to help in the development of tender responses. In Section 2.6 of the Approach to Market document sets out some of those.

For example, a recent independent Market Report from May 2025 which provides Queensland groundwater prices that's available on our department website. There's water market and historical trade information on the Bureau of Meteorology's water information dashboard and there's water market trading data published on the Queensland Government's website. Those links are provided in the Frequently Asked Questions and the Approach to Market document itself on AusTender.

Those links and information are provided as guidance for tenderers consideration and tenderers are encouraged to consider the relevant market data regarding recent trades and sales prices, but also to seek appropriate advice when determining the price they wish to offer.

Also got some frequently asked questions around what happens after the tender closes? What happens once I've submitted my offer? When will I know the outcome of my offer? Can the government decline a tender offer? and if my offers declined, can I change my price?

It's the department's intent to promptly evaluate the offers and advise sellers of the outcome. After tender responses have been submitted and evaluated by the department, offers to successful tenders are expected to be made by December 2025 but that may extend out to March next year, depending on the number of offers that require evaluation. Tenderers will be contacted to notify them if their offer has been accepted or declined.

Tenders can request to withdraw their tender response after the closing time, and the department will consider that request.

The department may decline an offer under a range of circumstances. This may include where a tender response doesn't meet the minimum requirements as per Section 4.2 of the Approach to Market, or if it fails to represent value for money, or if, in comparison to other tender responses, it represents less value for money. All tender responses will be evaluated as per Section of the Approach to Market, and tenders can't change the price after the tender closing time.

Note that the department isn't seeking to enter into counteroffers or negotiations, but if they do occur, it will likely be only under limited circumstances, and as per Clause 3.11 of the Approach to Market. So tenderers should ensure that their tender reflects their best offer price.

The last question is around stock and domestic, so if I sell my entire groundwater licence, will I still be able to access water for stock and domestic purposes? The short answer is yes, even if the entire volume of groundwater licence is sold to the Commonwealth, sellers will still be able to access and use their existing groundwater bore for stock and domestic purposes.

That brings us to the end of the presentation. Thanks very much for listening. If you want to find out more information on Strategic water purchasing to bridge the gap, you can visit our website the address there on the screen, you can review the Approach to Market documentation on AusTender, as I said, tenders.gov.au, and search for groundwater rights.

And if you have any other questions beyond the frequently asked questions that are part of the Approach to Market documentation on AusTender, you can email us before 4pm on the 13^th of August at the email address on your screen. And if you quote in the subject line 2025 Northern basin groundwater ATM, that will come through to us to answer as soon as possible.

Thank you.