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

On this point, as we have gone onto it now with those questions from Senator Crossin, I think it is worth putting on the record that the issues being raised were raised by the Northern Land Council in a supplementary submission. Because of the absurd time frame put on them, and on the Senate and the Senate committee, it was not actually submitted until after the hearing. So they put in that submission on Monday this week, after the hearing had been held, obviously when they were finally able to go through the legislation in detail and find this single clause in there. It is on the Senate committee website as additional correspondence, I think, for anybody who wants to check it out. It raises the issues that Senator Crossin was drawing on. Without disputing or getting into the competition of different advisers, whatever the opinion of the government about land councils, I do not think they would suggest that they do not know what they are talking about when it comes to permits. They live that stuff pretty regularly. Having said that, my understanding is that most of the day-to-day stuff with permits, in terms of individuals, is done at local level through traditional owners.

The one point I wanted to clarify goes back to that particular clause that we were discussing before the dinner break, section 74AA—item 14 on page 53. The minister has just said again that his advice is that, in the context of somebody passing on, the issue of the permit, while it is an individual, is in that category of being ‘traditional owner’ and therefore somebody else who is a traditional owner could revoke it. I want to clarify, because I really was not 100 per cent clear before dinner, whether that collective revocation power only applies in the context of the original issuer having passed on. Or is that something that applies all the time—forget about whether or not somebody dies? Is a permit able to be revoked by another traditional owner or is that only in the context of where someone dies? If it is able to be revoked by another traditional owner, doesn’t that create the same potential problems of confusion?