Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Community Services) Share this | Hansard source

There has been a great deal of confusion in circumstances where somebody with a permit has been legitimately going about their business and then someone else who had nothing to do necessarily with that person with that particular permit—it may have been a land council—cancelled that permit. And there have been circumstances where that has been the case. This is simply to ensure that we have no further confusion, and it will put beyond doubt that only a party who has issued the permit can revoke that permit. When I say ‘a party’, I am talking not necessarily about an individual but a group of individuals. So the same group of representative people are the only people who can revoke the permit. And, yes, it is deliberate, because there has been an amount of mischief where someone else who may have been unknown at the time has cancelled a permit, making the action on the land unlawful, even for the period of time whilst it was sorted out. When it is actually cancelled, they do not have a lawful permit to be on the land, and in that period of time that unlawfulness can be a bit embarrassing. We just want to make it clear that the person or the group of people who made the decision, the ones who were fully cognisant of the facts and the opportunities—the reasons why somebody said, ‘I want to come onto the land’—are the only ones able to cancel that permit, not some other individual or organisation, which has happened in the past.