The Australian Government represented by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (the department) is inviting expressions of interest from eligible water right owners in the Southern Connected Basin indicating their willingness to sell some or all of those water rights to the Australian Government in 2025. Southern Connected Basin includes the following catchments:

• New South Wales – Murrumbidgee, New South Wales Murray and Lower Darling

• South Australia – South Australian Murray

• Victoria – Campaspe, Goulburn-Broken, Kiewa, Victorian Murray, Loddon, Ovens, King, and Mitta Mitta.

This EOI is the first stage of a multi-stage procurement process. Responses received under this EOI will help guide subsequent approaches to market in 2025 aimed towards delivering the Murray–Darling Basin Plan 2012 (the Basin Plan) in full, in accordance with the Restoring Our Rivers Framework.

Further details about the scope of this EOI are set out in clauses 2.2 and 2.3. of this EOI.

 

2.3 EOI scope

a) The Australian Government (represented by the department) is inviting owners of eligible water rights in the catchments listed below, including unregulated entitlements and section 51 licences, to express their interest stating the proposed price at which they want to sell their permanent water rights to the department. This includes water rights in areas with a high concentration of IIOs giving effect to the commitments in the Restoring Our Rivers Framework.

 

b) The department is only seeking responses for specific water rights within the relevant catchments identified in this EOI — see Table 2 for a list of eligible water rights in the catchments shown in Figure 1.

c) The catchments (represented in Figure 1) are:

   - New South Wales – NSW Murray, Murrumbidgee and Lower Darling

   - Victoria - Victoria Murray, Goulburn, Broken, Campaspe, Loddon, Kiewa, Ovens and King, Mitta Mitta  

   - South Australia – SA Murray 

d) All water rights that were within the scope of the Approach to Market for the 2024 Selected Catchments Open Tender (ATM_2024_2454), are excluded from the scope of this EOI.​​