NSW State Member for Murray Helen Dalton will be jumping head-first into the argument over whether the Lower Lakes are naturally salty estuarine waterways or freshwater.
Ms Dalton will meet with stakeholders in Renmark and Goolwa to hear first-hand accounts about the consequences of environmental water buybacks.
“No-one is going to know what’s going on by sitting in an office tower in Sydney or Canberra,” she said.
“You need to speak to the people directly affected, as well as experts who respect the science and who know what these lakes were like before humans started meddling with them.
“The Commonwealth is spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to flush fresh water into the Lower Lakes and out to sea. Every Australian needs to understand why this is happening and whether things need to change.
“I know many South Australian politicians like having freshwater lakes they can swim in and sail their expensive boats on.
“But that freshwater could be used to grow food and feed Australia as well as the rest of world.
“We need to assess the stories we have been told, because right now some claims about the Murray-Darling Basin, and those lakes, just don’t add up.”
The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists gave evidence to the South Australian Royal Commission into the Murray-Darling Basin that the current availability and management of water is inadequate to maintain the ecological character of the Coorong, Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth.
Associate Professor David Paton, from the University of Adelaide, told the commission in his opinion, current management actions and the volumes of environmental water being returned to the Coorong and Lower Lakes under the basin plan were unlikely to be sufficient to support the needs of waterbird populations.
“He emphasised the fact that, although salinity levels in the Lower Lakes and Coorong have tended to be the subject of most focus, water levels, and the insufficiency of flows to achieve them often enough, are a significant problem,” commissioner Bret Walker observed.
