Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I will talk to the amendment dealing with permits and to schedule 2 of the amendment. This amendment is actually superfluous. It is already covered by existing legislation and is in fact covered under section 72AA relating to a person who is in the service or employment of the Commonwealth, the Northern Territory or an authority—that is a definition of a person who is an officer, and they are covered.

Amendment (3) would mean that journalists would in fact be able to range over the 48 per cent of the Northern Territory that is Aboriginal land rather than just communities. This would be an issue in terms of privacy and sacred sites, the very views that our exclusion of removing the permit system for 99.8 per cent of the Territory would seek to respect. For that reason we oppose that.

Amendment (4) relates to subsection (3). On (5), this would actually be returned to the permit system or to one of the closed communities. To take issue with Vince Kelly: is he seriously telling anyone that the rivers of grog, the pornography, the drug running and the sexual abuse has not occurred with the permit system now? It has not helped whatsoever. But I would ask him to have a look at Daly River, where there is no permit system and which is a far cleaner, healthier, more secure community. So the proof is in the pudding. I say to him and to you that there is no substitute for police. That is our commitment: to give people genuine policing, not hide behind a permit system that has simply failed communities.

Finally, in relation to the powers of the minister, why is it that you are requesting only that the minister issue a permit to a person or revoke a permit to someone who may be of bad character?

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