Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to hear that. Our amendments are not before the chair, but in the interests of efficiency we may as well continue exploring this issue. We have a dinner break at 6.30, so perhaps the minister could look into that issue over the break. There are two questions that Senator Evans asked Senator Scullion and that he partly answered with regard to this new clause 74AA on page 53 and why this decision has been made to prevent a land council being able to revoke a permit given by a traditional owner and vice versa. If I heard the minister’s answer correctly, he said that it was because there had been some mischief from time to time that had led to confusion. I can certainly understand that, if someone had a permit and the land council in Alice Springs, Darwin or wherever cancelled it, it might take a while for the cancellation notice to be stamped on the permit—that sort of thing—and there could be some confusion in the meantime. I can understand that, but I would assume that the same thing could apply with any permit that is revoked—making sure that, whoever revokes it, the message gets through to the appropriate people that it has been revoked.

The statement the minister made—to paraphrase him slightly—is that there had been some mischief about this sort of thing. I would appreciate it if he could provide some details, perhaps after the dinner break, of where that mischief is. How big is the problem that exists that this is trying to solve? As other senators have suggested, there is a lot of concern that this could be creating some new and bigger problems. If it is trying to solve a problem that is actually very tiny and, in the process, creating a much bigger one then it is probably not a terribly good idea. So perhaps the minister could give us some examples of where this has been a problem and whether there was actually some ill intent, as opposed to either confusion or a difference of opinion. That would be useful. I have been told that it happens occasionally that a land council will revoke a permit issued by a traditional owner but that it is not done very often. It is usually, if not always, done on the request of other people who have said that there is a problem.

Perhaps we could have been given some information about just how frequently this has been an issue at all, for good as well as for ill. I am sure that it has been done for good purposes; in fact, I know it has. I know of one example where some people were given a bunch of permits by someone to have a party in a dry area, a lot of other people complained, and the land council stepped in and revoked the permits to resolve the problem. That is one instance I have been given. That will not be possible anymore under this new section. You might be trying to deal with a problem but you are also preventing land councils from dealing with a problem, so I am still far from convinced that it is a desirable solution, and it would be good to have some evidence about this. I cannot help but repeat the comment that we should have had the opportunity to examine this properly in the Senate committee process when we had the land councils there. I think they got 30 minutes between them, maybe 35 if they were lucky, and we did not get the opportunity to ask them these sorts of questions. We would obviously have asked them then if we had had the opportunity. We cannot ask them now, so we have to try and do it via the minister.

I want to track back to make as clear as possible the meaning of this new clause that the minister was explaining, because certainly from some material I have seen from the land council that is not how they perceive it. I am not doubting the minister but I think it would be good to get it absolutely beyond doubt. The wording says:

A permit issued under section 5 of the Aboriginal Land Act of the Northern Territory may only be revoked by the issuer of the permit.

I take what the minister has said to mean that if a traditional owner issues a permit for the purposes of this new section, the issuer is not just a traditional owner; it is any traditional owner, and it becomes a matter of whether the issuer is within the traditional owner class, if you like, or the land council class—or, indeed, the minister, I presume. It would be useful to clarify that because, on the face of it, the way it reads to me is that the issuer of the permit is a traditional owner, they issue it and no-one else can revoke it except them. The minister indicated that if that person passes on, the issuer is deemed to be the traditional owners as a group. Does that group ability to revoke only kick in if the original issuer passes on or is it there all the time that any traditional owner can revoke it? And if it is the case that any traditional owner can revoke it, does that leaves us in the circumstance where one traditional owner could issue a permit and another one could say it is revoked, and we would then have that same sort of confusion? That is something that springs to my mind with regard to that, whether that is relevant to the new clause or the existing system.