Farmers will have to wait to see if Agriculture and Water Resources Minister Barnaby Joyce can deliver them favourable treatment on water.
Mr Joyce still doesn't have control of commonwealth water holdings in the Murray-Darling Basin, despite holding talks with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to clarify his responsibilities.
It's understood Mr Joyce wanted the day-to-day running of water and control over the Basin.
But he left the Wednesday meeting with commonwealth water holdings retained by the federal environment department.
Farmers and irrigators had hoped that transferring water policy to Mr Joyce's department would tip the balance in favour of their needs, rather than the environment.
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They are now unlikely to access any of the 2.372 million megalitres of water managed by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder.
As dryer weather conditions are forecast, the agency says it has no immediate plans to sell allocations because of the potentially high demands for environmental water across the basin.
There was confusion about how much authority Mr Joyce would have after the Nationals renegotiated the coalition deal with Mr Turnbull's ascendancy to the prime ministership.
A posse of crossbench senators has called for a pause to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and responsibility for it to be transferred to Mr Joyce.
The group of senators says the plan is creating a crisis for farmers that will flow onto rural communities and affect food supply.
Labor agriculture spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon accused Mr Joyce of sending out his supporters because he was embarrassed about being "dudded" by Mr Turnbull.
It came as a delegation of northern Victorian food manufacturers visited Parliament House with a plea for enough water to keep feeding the nation.
Between $5-6 million a day is being lost in food and fibre production across the basin, they claimed.
