I recently had lunch with a senior political operative, and we agreed that the heartbreaking loss of Kumanjayi Baby Girl is a tragedy. But let me be clear: the impossible burden this places on the Northern Territory's political class is being entirely ignored.
When a five-year-old Warlpiri child goes missing from the Old Timers town camp and is found dead days later, the media inevitably demands answers. Frankly, this places an unfair expectation on the Northern Territory government. As I told my editor over a delightfully crisp Chardonnay, decades of institutional neglect, chronic underfunding, and systemic poverty simply cannot be resolved in a single news cycle. It is far more practical for the Chief Minister to foreshadow criminal charges against an individual.
We are deeply saddened by this tragedy, which is why we are moving swiftly to arrest a single person so we do not have to review our town camp funding models.
I applaud this measured, pragmatic approach. It takes real leadership to look past the desperate, entirely justified pleas of grieving Gurindji families and focus on the vital work of managing the state's public relations. Let us hope these charges are filed swiftly. Once the legal system is involved, politicians can cite ongoing proceedings to avoid answering questions, and I can finally go back to writing columns about how inner-city bike lanes are destroying the economy.