Deal or No Deal, I smell a rat says Nick.

Murray-Darling Basin Authority figures show SA - the only state with a major capital city reliant on the basin - has taken about 7 per cent of the total water extracted from the River Murray in the last decade.

Victoria draws out 34 per cent and NSW takes 53 per cent from the basin, which also stretches to Queensland and the ACT.

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson Young says the SA government also needs to rethink its water priorities.

"The encouraging recent rainfall should be seen as an opportunity to get stuck into restoring the health of the river, not allow more to be extracted," she said.

Over the past decade, 94 per cent of the water extracted from the rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin has been used for irrigation.

Residents on the Lower Lakes, Senators Hanson-Young and independent Senator Nick Xenophon believe the federal government should pull the states into line and take over management of the system now, before Australia's largest internationally significant wetlands are lost forever.

Senator Nick Xenophon said "When the NSW irrigators and the rice growers say this is a good deal, I smell a rat.

"We need to put an end to the madness of water trading in this country where it's treated as a commodity and not the essential precious resource that it is.

"We are running out of time."