Anthony Albanese spent Sunday at Wurrumiyanga on the Tiwi Islands, his first visit there as Prime Minister, opening a $12.4 million child and family centre and defending his decision to skip this year's Garma Festival.
The Pumulayu Child and Family Centre brings early childhood development, youth support, family safety and gambling harm reduction services into one building, designed with the Mantiyupwi Traditional Owners of Bathurst Island. Indigenous Australians Minister Malarndirri McCarthy's announcement put the cost at $12.4 million, drawn from the Aboriginals Benefit Account, which holds royalty equivalents from mining on Aboriginal land in the Territory. At the doorstop the Prime Minister rounded it to "$12 million from the Federal Government" and called it "exactly the sort of investment in infrastructure that the Territory needs and remote communities need".
The jobs numbers got similar top billing. McCarthy said 140 positions have been rolled out on the Tiwis under the Remote Jobs and Economic Development program, part of a first tranche of 3,000 jobs across remote Australia, and Albanese put the Territory's share at 1,350. The program began replacing the Community Development Program in December 2024 with waged positions, and the government has committed to 6,000 of them by 2030. "What we did was replace the old CDP, that simply wasn't working, with real jobs, with real training and real skills and real wages," Albanese said. He also pointed to the $2 billion committed to remote housing, and McCarthy to the subsidised essentials scheme now running through remote stores, including the one at Wurrumiyanga.
The harder questions were about where he was not going. Albanese pledged at last year's Garma Festival to attend every year he held the office, a commitment reported by The Nightly this week, and this year's festival at Gulkula in East Arnhem Land runs from 31 July to 3 August without him. Asked about the criticism, he named the critic: "Only by the ABC, which also isn't attending by the way. The Insiders program isn't going to Garma this year either." He said he had been to Garma eight times, five of them as Labor leader, which he called more than any party leader since federation, and that communities had asked him to visit different centres. Foreign Minister Penny Wong and McCarthy will attend in his place.
Sunday had lighter moments. Asked whether his government would back a 20th AFL licence for the Territory, Albanese said "I'd love to see a team here in the territory, as I'm sure all Territorians would", before adding "I don't run the AFL" and promising to engage constructively with any submission. On Pauline Hanson telling the CPAC conference in London that Australia has "gone completely woke", he declined the bait: "When I have the opportunity to represent Australia overseas, I talk Australia up. I don't talk Australia down."
The visit was his 19th to the Territory as Prime Minister, by his own count, and his first to the Tiwis in the job. The measure that will outlast the day is the one the government has set itself: 6,000 remote jobs by 2030, against 140 delivered so far on the islands he chose over Gulkula.
