FAKE LOWER LAKES
For decades, we’ve been told the Lower Lakes are natural freshwater lakes that must be kept full at any cost.
That’s not true.
Historically, the Lower Lakes were a tidal estuary — shaped by the Southern Ocean, groundwater from the South East, and long periods of low or no Murray flow. What exists today is an engineered system. Barrages, drains and artificial controls have turned an estuary into a permanent freshwater body that never existed naturally.
To hold these “lakes” at an artificial level, vast volumes of water are forced down the Murray. That water is stripped from productive communities in Murray — from farms, food production, jobs and regional economies — to maintain an outcome built on fiction, not history.
This approach has come at enormous cost. It has increased pressure on the river, driven damaging water recovery upstream, and failed to deliver the environmental outcomes promised. During drought, the system collapses — hypersalinity, ecological damage and constant dredging just to keep the Murray Mouth open.
We need to be honest.
Restoring the Lower Lakes to a more natural estuarine state would ease pressure on the Murray, protect productive water in Murray, and allow river management to be guided by evidence, not politics.
That’s why I’m calling for a Royal Commission into Australian water management — to expose the truth and reset this system on facts, not falsehoods.
Read more about the REAL history of the fake lakes at:
