Push for council to back Kairli Cultural and Language Centre as major Albany bicentenary legacy project

The prospect of Southern Aboriginal Corporation’s planned Kairli Cultural and Language Centre being a major legacy project of Albany’s bicentenary celebrations in 2026 will be raised at council on Tuesday. Plans for the cultural centre were first made public about four years ago following SAC’s purchase of a vacant Princess Royal Harbour waterfront block in 2019, which it now owns outright after paying the purchase off in full. The initials plans showed the boomerang-shaped building would be built on a block between the Albany Entertainment Centre and Anzac Peace Park. SAC chief executive Asha Bhat said significant work had already been done to make the centre a reality and it just needed an approved development application to be fully “shovel-ready”. She said plans for the KCLC had not changed since 2019 and upon completion it would empower “Aboriginal people to benefit from cultural tourism and enabling self-determination through delivery of support services for Noongar people”. “While Indigenous tourism has been identified as a significant market within Australia that is performing within a growth cycle, Albany and the Great Southern region is yet to establish and take advantage of this industry growth,” she said. “The purpose of developing the Kairli Cultural and Language Centre is to design, construct and deliver a space that represents the unique Indigenous culture of the Great Southern region as well as a broader national perspective. “This space will attract visitation ranging from local to international as well as educational entities.” A motion set to be tabled by Cr Chris Thomson will call on a report to be prepared that outlines options for how the City can “best assist” the development of SAC’s planned centre “as a major legacy project of the 2026 Albany bicentenary”. If supported in its current form the motion will ask the report be presented to an ordinary council meeting before the end of August. In his reasoning attached to the motion, Cr Thomson said the motion was a way to inform elected members about developments regarding the planned KCLC and to secure the City’s priority consideration of assistance towards the centre’s realisation. He said the centre was planned for a prominent and historically significant site “metres from where Major Edmund Lockyer pulled ashore in 1826, in what was ground zero for European colonisation of the Western third of the Australian continent”. “SAC — as a not-for-profit community organisation and experienced property manager — has put its money where its mouth is on this major cultural and community development project,” he said. “Further, SAC advises that it has a $2 million conditional funding commitment for the project from the national Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation.” He said a letter of support for the “grassroots community project” from the City for a possible $15 million Growing Regions Program would not be a big burden given its “potential to bring great economic and cultural investment to Albany”. “Since 2019, the City has, on an ongoing basis, convened overarching steering committees for the bicentenary,” he said. “These high-level discussions are yet to deliver a single announcement of a major legacy project. “With the bicentenary now only 30 months away, the City should take all reasonable steps to prioritise facilitation of the Kairli Cultural and Language Centre as a major, perhaps the major, legacy project of the bicentenary.” The officer comment attached to the motion states the City has had “preliminary supportive conversations” with SAC representatives regarding the KCLC and a Growing Regions Program funding opportunity. A SAC push to attract State Government funding ahead of the 2021 election was unsuccessful. Last year Australia’s South West — the region’s peak tourism organisation — included the centre as priority infrastructure project for the Great Southern in a document as part of its ongoing development of a tourism destination management plan. Ms Bhat said the KCLC “should be part of the 2026 legacy” and the first stage of the project could still be completed for that to happen. “This is not about our organisation, not about politics, not about personalities, it is about the concept and what we can collectively achieve as a community to support our First Nations People,” she said. “If people are supportive of the concept, the rest can be worked out.”