Malarndirri McCarthy is an Australian politician, a member of the Australian Labor Party, and a Senator for the Northern Territory since 2016.
She was known as Barbara Anne McCarthy until 2007, when she adopted her current name to honour her deceased mother.
Ms McCarthy was elected to the NT Legislative Assembly for the division of Arnhem from 2005 to 2012. She held a number of portfolios over the following four years, but lost her seat in Labor's landslide defeat at the 2012 election. Ms McCarthy subsequently returned to the media as a presenter for NITV and SBS News. She re-entered politics as Labor's lead Senate candidate in the Northern Territory at the 2016 federal election. Following the Labor Party's victory at the 2022 federal election, Ms McCarthy became the Assistant Minister for Indigenous Australians and Indigenous Health under the Albanese government.
As a former journalist, Ms McCarthy won the 2013 Journalism Story of the Year Deadly Award for her story on two Perth Noongar brothers, the Thorne Brothers, who were in Saudi Arabia. She was a member of the National Indigenous Television (NITV) team's Walkley Awards nomination in 2014 for the Innocence Betrayed documentary based on the Bowraville murders investigation. In 2013, she received two Walkley nominations for her story on Mercedes-Benz that filmed its advertisement on Wave Rock in Western Australia, a place of deep cultural significance to Aboriginal custodians. The general manager of Mercedes-Benz flew to Wave Rock to personally apologise to its custodians.
