Long-suffering readers know my refrain: Western Australia can build stadiums, museums and Metronet tunnels, yet still cannot build a permanent home for its agriculture department. Call it DPIRD or the old Ag Department, or—as I prefer—the Department of People, Inclusion, Re-education and Diversity. Titles change, logos change, ministers change. The reality stays the same. For decades we have shuffled staff around Perth like sailors swapping hammocks on a leaking frigate, while Treasury rations provisions and leaves a skeleton crew to guard the State’s food and fibre engine room.
The story starts at Kensington, the recently abandoned old head quarters. A Cold War relic straight from the MAS*H set, built in 1956 out of whatever they could scrounge: concrete, fibro, asbestos, and optimism. Once, you could stand on the veranda and see glasshouses, trial plots, and half the state’s ag scientists at work. Then came the 1980s and the ship started to rot due to a lack of maintenance. By the 1990s the treasure hunt for a new HQ had began.
Since 1993 we have had eight agriculture ministers—House, Chance, Redman, Baston, Nalder, Lewis, MacTiernan, Jarvis. Eight captains. Eight charts drawn. Not one building raised from the ground.
Only one Minister managed to crack the Treasury chest open. Alannah MacTiernan prised out real coin, shifted 500 staff into Northbridge in 2021 (with a 10-year lease), and in December 2022 secured $320 million for a purpose-built HQ at Murdoch. Labs, glasshouses, biosecurity command, co-location with academia. A proper naval dockyard at last. Credit where due.
Then came the handover. Captain Jackie Jarvis marched aboard, shovel in hand ready to start building. And then… nothing. Two years at anchor. No piles. No footings. Just HMAS DPIRD drifting in the doldrums. In August 2024 the flag came down: Murdoch abandoned.
Why? Take your pick from the captain’s excuse locker. We needed a separate biosecurity fortress on a distant island, a five-deck vessel was deemed too tricky to rig, the harbour bed turned out to be swamp and sour sand, nearby villagers might grumble at the gunpowder smoke, the traffic lanes were said to be too crowded to navigate, and of course—fear not—there’s always a fresh tale of treacherous tides and phantom reefs ready to unfurl tomorrow.
All solvable if admitted early. Instead, money burned, time vanished, and a fresh flag of excuses was run up the mast each dawn for all to see from the bridge.
With no wind in the sails out came new maps and in came the island-hopping strategy. Canning Vale became the first landfall: $83 million announced, $97.3 million delivered, desks ready for a biosecurity army who will apparently fend off pests by typing emails. Then Jandakot claimed—2.75 hectares, $55.7 million, room for 100 staff. On to Wanneroo, 5.5 hectares for trials. A ribbon at each port, another bit of braid sewn on the captain’s jacket.
To be fair: Jarvis has done more physical site-acquisition than anyone including MacTiernan. But the core question stands: where is the one-stop-shop HQ? The promise was consolidation, not a maritime scavenger hunt.
Meanwhile, South Perth heads for “revitalisation.” Translation: apartments, parks, Treasury windfall. Meanwhile we pay for make-good works, CBD leases, Murdoch design fees, Canning Vale builds, Jandakot builds, Wanneroo prep. And somewhere buried in the budget papers sits that $320 million line—alive only because no one wants to admit the treasure chest might be empty.
On 16 October 2025, Jarvis stood before the crew and declared, “The Cook Government remains fully committed to providing a long-term, fit-for-purpose metropolitan facility for DPIRD, with $320 million set aside in the Budget.” A bold pronouncement from the bridge. Yet below decks the murmurs rolled like a swell: so which course is it, Captain? Will we abandon Canning Vale and Jandakot? Cut the flagship in half? Or spend $320 million on something scarcely larger than a stateroom once the shipwrights and cost blowouts have taken their share?
Complication: the 10-year Northbridge lease still has six years to run. At the speed this Government lays keel to timber, they will need to chart and secure a new harbour long before the Captain dreams of cutting a ribbon mid-term. So brace for a triumphant trumpet blast any day now announcing a fresh anchorage — ample enough, of course, for 500 crew, not 600, because the forward estimates decree that at least a hundred must quietly walk the plank to balance the ship’s books.
So, if the island of Murdoch is not habitable, where next? Curtin again? Tech Park? Kwinana? Or the ultimate irony: realise the old Kensington site ticked soil, access and proximity, and then admit 4 ha should have been kept out of Treasury’s greedy hands and a new building built in the corner next to the CSIRO.
Until a new harbour is chosen, the crew will keep bobbing about the Perth archipelago — Northbridge, William Street, Murdoch, Hillarys, Fremantle, Rockingham, Canning Vale, Jandakot, Vic Park, Wanneroo, Shenton Park — tossed from berth to berth like sailors without a home port. Morale follows the bunk. Industry follows morale. The only thing truly centralised is confusion charted across every tide and compass point.
Still, MacTiernan and Jarvis have done more than any before them. If Jarvis keeps $320 million intact, finds land, and turns soil, I will cheer from the crow’s nest. But if the funding evaporates and staffing keeps shrinking, she joins the long line of captains who circled the harbour while the tide carried opportunity out to sea.
