The Jabiru Sports and Social Club announced that it would close permanently, after shutting its doors at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

While the closure of a regional club is hardly front-page news, this was the latest blow to a place that is fast becoming a ghost town.

Jabiru’s demise – brought on by the wind-down of the Ranger Uranium Mine – will have massive consequences, and it’s not the only remote Territory town staring at a bleak future.

Nhulunbuy will need to find a new way to prosper as Rio Tinto winds down its bauxite mining operations in Northeast Arnhem Land, while the increase in fly-in, fly-out workers has had an impact in ­Alyangula.

All of this creates a further deepening of the disparity between life in Darwin and remote parts of the Territory.

Our city is often described as a place of great opportunity, even marketed as such by the NT government.

But beyond the cities and major towns those opportunities quickly dry up.

And as mining operations wind down in places like Jabiru and Nhulunbuy, they will become even more scarce.

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Each year the Prime Minister stands up in parliament and delivers the Closing the Gap report.

But the few gains being made are by Aboriginal people living in urban areas.

For those living in the bush, the gap is getting wider.

Without real economic development in remote communities it will continue to do so.

During a recent ABC radio interview about the need to continue JobSeeker assistance, NT Council of Social Services chief executive Deborah Di Natale remarked that there were 57 people out of work in the NT for every vacant job position.

Host Adam Steer rightly pointed out that most of these people are in remote communities.

This is not a new problem caused by the coronavirus.

It’s one that has existed for far too long, and until it’s fixed the gap will never really be closed.

In the past month the Coroner has held two inquests into the horrific deaths of six children in remote communities – four by suicide and two who died from substance abuse.

For as long as children see a future without hope, tragedies like these will continue.

Yet great impediments – often imposed by bureaucrats and activists in their comfortable urban homes and offices – are placed in the way of remote economic development.

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Highlighting the problem is easier than identifying a solution, but there are a few obvious places to start.

We need a serious upgrade of remote infrastructure so that major towns – such as Wadeye and Nhulunbuy – can be accessed year-round by decent, sealed roads.

To help fund this, the commonwealth could redirect some of the billions of dollars in funding spent each year on addressing Indigenous disadvantage that goes to big southern cities where no such disadvantage exists.

Township leases need to be negotiated in these communities so their residents are given the opportunity to develop businesses and even own their own homes.

And the Northern Territory’s public service needs to be refocused so its priority is nurturing this development, not standing in its way.

The easy thing to do is to say that it’s all too hard.

But there are pockets of the Territory where real economic development – driven by local Aboriginal leadership – is being realised.

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There’s no better example than the Gumatj Corporation which operates several successful businesses including a timber mill, concrete batching plant, butcher shop and a bauxite mine.

Unfortunately this is the exception rather than the rule and the challenge of breaking this cycle of welfare dependency and despair is immense.

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If we can’t achieve real economic development in a place like Jabiru – surrounded by the Kakadu National Park and the thousands of tourists it brings each year – then closing the gap will remain a pipe dream.