PIRLANGIMPI, TIWI ISLANDS – The Tiwi Plantations Corporation has released its 2026-2030 Workforce Plan, in what is being described as the first time a remote Indigenous community has produced strategic employment material faster than the federal department responsible for assisting them.
The 100% Tiwi-owned corporation, which already manages over 30,000 hectares of plantation estate and last year acquired its own deep-water port, said the plan would build career pathways across nursery operations, planting programs, harvesting, port logistics and silviculture.
The National Indigenous Australians Agency confirmed it had been notified of the plan and would issue a congratulatory statement once the appropriate stakeholder consultation framework had concluded in late 2027.
“We are deeply proud of the Tiwi self-determination model and remain committed to supporting it through observation” said a senior departmental spokesperson. “When we say community-led, we mean exactly that. We will be leading from approximately 4,200 kilometres away.”
Asked how the Remote Jobs and Economic Development Program compared, the spokesperson noted that the federal initiative had delivered 1,450 of its initially targeted 3,000 jobs in a little over two years. The target has since been doubled to 6,000 in what officials described as “an aspirational ceiling we are confident we can fail to meet at scale…”
The Tiwi Forestry Seasonal Calendar, developed alongside the workforce plan, aligns operations with Tiwi seasons and ecological knowledge – a methodology departmental officials said they were “studying with interest, with a view to potentially considering it for our 2031 strategic refresh.”
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