Senate inquiry supports rewriting

Despite the endorsement, the government's proposal is still unlikely to pass without the support of the Greens, who have demanded stronger guarantees on water recovery.

The Albanese government proposal would give the MDBP's water saving infrastructure projects more money and time to be completed - extending the deadline to 2027 - and make it easier for the Commonwealth to purchase water from voluntary sellers.

The Senate committee recommended the bill be passed with several minor amendments.

However, none of the 15 recommendations met the Greens' call for an iron-clad guarantee that the plan will be delivered on time and in full, including the additional 450GL of water for the environment.

The committee recommended the expanded use of water buybacks, which it accepted would have an impact on communities, "but views some of the concerns regarding buybacks as overinflated and not supported by the high-quality evidence base".

The proposal would see communities affected by buybacks financially compensated. The committee found the "stricter eligibility parameters" should be implemented that required communities to demonstrate how they were impacted by water acquisition.

It also suggested the assistance to be directed into projects that produce and maintain jobs for the long-term.

Greens water spokesperson Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said her party was demanding a guarantee because the report made it clear the plan would not be delivered in full even with the extended deadlines.

"No one believes any of these time frames are going to be met," Senator Hanson-Young said.

"The Productivity Commission says they won't be met, every expert in the country that submitted to the committee says it will not be met. The state governments...acknowledge these time frames will not be met

"Yet here we are being asked to pass a piece of legislation by the government to extend the deadlines, when even their own government-chaired report says the new time frames will not be met."

Coalition Senators voiced their opposition to the bill's plan to remove the cap on Commonwealth buybacks and the socio-economic testing that prevents voluntary purchases that would harm communities.

Agriculture Minister Murray Watt said the health of the Murray-Darling Basin was intrinsically tied to the future sustainability of the ag sector.

"If we don't fix the Murray-Darling Basin, we are not only just jeopardising the river system that underpins it, we are jeopardising the agricultural production and the rural communities that rely on that flow of water well into the future," Senator Watt said.

The bill will be debated in the Senate next week and Labor has declared it wants it passed into law by the end of the year.