The southern Murray-Darling Basin irrigators are left with improbability and injustice due to the artificial limitations put on the water trading. In concern for the same, the National Water Commission wishes to lift them, as soon as the lower water use limits are also set up.

A record from 1998/99 to 2008/09, which was almost a decade of drought, has been unveiled by this commission, laying down the effects of water trading in the southern basin. This water trading has also been acknowledged to as a "major success story" by Commissioner Laurie Arthur.

In the most difficult times of the irrigators, their cash flow and relieve debt had been recovered by selling the water entitlements. But that was not the case in Victoria and NSW, where artificial restrictions on entitlement trading hiked the constrained purchasers and retailers, and were expensive, creating more uncertainty.

Mr. Arthur said, “Not many State Governments can stand up and say they have run a neutral line on trading. They just need to let irrigators adapt to their own situations and let water move to where it's needed most”.

But such circumstances have again put the farmers in agitation as they said that the opening up of water trading can only get gains if the upcoming water use limits don't take them out of commerce.