Northern Australia: so much economic wealth alongside so much disadvantage

The Australian’s reporting on the suffering of Indigenous children in Port Hedland should sicken everyone in this country. Three children murdered by their mother after repeated warnings about their safety. A grandmother pleading for intervention. Other children reportedly living in squalor, hungry and neglected. These aren’t tragedies unfolding in some impoverished country. They’re happening in one of Australia’s wealthiest resource regions.

I’ve served in war zones and travelled through some of the world’s most impoverished and insecure places. I’ve seen children with swollen bellies from malnutrition and parents desperately struggling to keep their families alive. Those experiences stay with you. What makes Port Hedland so confronting is that profound human suffering is occurring here, in our own prosperous country, in a region at the centre of that prosperity.

I’ve spent much of my professional life examining threats to Australia’s security. Some describe my views as hawkish. So my concern here extends to Australia’s national capabilities and priorities. Australia cannot credibly defend, develop or secure its north while the communities on which that effort depends on are being left behind.

A nation capable of protecting billion-dollar export infrastructure but unable to consistently protect vulnerable children living in its shadow has a serious problem.

In 2025–26, the Pilbara’s ports handled an estimated $150 billion in exports. That wealth helps sustain living standards, government revenues and economic opportunities across Australia.

Yet alongside this prosperity are communities experiencing profound disadvantage.

How have we become so effective at extracting wealth from northern Australia while remaining so unsuccessful at translating that wealth into enduring local prosperity?

For generations, we’ve treated the north primarily as somewhere to extract resources rather than somewhere to build thriving communities.

We’ve constructed world-class ports, railways and export corridors connecting resources with international markets. But the systems needed to sustain communities – housing, healthcare, education, policing and child protection – haven’t consistently delivered comparable results.

This isn’t simply about money. Nor does disadvantage excuse neglect, abuse or institutional inaction.

The Hawke children murdered in 2022 – Jamelia, Arnda and Kelvin – deserve a full accounting of the failures preceding their deaths. Their grandmother, Dorothy Papertalk, deserves answers. Governments must ensure warnings trigger effective intervention and those responsible are held accountable.

But we must also confront the wider economic contradiction.

Australia’s northern development model too often resembles a colonial extraction system: wealth flows outward while communities confront social problems that decades of economic growth haven’t resolved.

Governments collect substantial revenues through taxation and royalties. Mining companies invest heavily in employment, infrastructure and community programs.

The question is why that expenditure is failing to deliver lasting improvements in the lives of so many local people.

Northern Australia is more than a sparsely populated region requiring perpetual assistance. It’s a connected network of nationally significant economic and strategic assets, from the Pilbara’s mineral corridors to Darwin’s defence infrastructure and Queensland’s industrial centres.

Its communities are as important to national resilience as its ports and supply chains. Our national security also depends on healthy, educated and resilient communities, a capable local workforce and the social cohesion needed to sustain Australia’s presence and operations across the north. Neglecting these foundations undermines the very national capabilities we are investing billions to strengthen.

Governments should publish transparent regional accounts showing resource revenues, public investment, infrastructure gaps and community outcomes, informing long-term agreements with local and Indigenous communities.

National security is more than protecting borders and infrastructure; it’s also about institutions capable of protecting Australians.

We cannot celebrate the billions flowing from northern Australia while accepting deprivation where that wealth originates.

The true measure of northern development isn’t how much wealth leaves the region. It’s whether children growing up there are safe and have a future worthy of Australia’s prosperity.