Howard had last month warned that without a significant downpour by June, irrigation to farmers along southeastern Australia's Murray-Darling river system would be cut.

Although the area has had some rain since that announcement, it remains firmly within the grip of drought, with dam levels at less than six percent of their capacity.

"It's still a worry because it hasn't rained enough," Howard said.

"This affects all of us, this drought, and I say without any hint of irony you should all continue to pray for more rain because we need it very, very badly."

Howard's comments came amid reports that the amount of water flowing into the Murray-Darling system has been overestimated by as much as 40 percent.

Bill Heffernan, the head of Howard's Northern Australian agricultural task forces, said previous estimates were inaccurate because they wrongly counted ground and surface water as separate systems.

"Forty percent of the inflow into the Murray-Darling comes from ground water," he told the Australian Financial Review. "So when you have been accounting for it as a separate resource, this is a serious error."

But Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull dismissed the 40 percent figure, which he said came from averaging ground water across the region, as misleading.

"Generalised remarks of that kind are not helpful because it varies enormously from place to place," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

But he acknowledged there had been overestimation of water supplies in the past.

"There has been over-allocation through the (Murray-Darling) basin. I just say that. And the relationship between groundwater and surface water is a part of that."

The Murray-Darling provides 40 percent of Australia's agricultural produce.

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