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

The lease is like any other lease. The lease provides the Commonwealth with the same capacity as with any other leased piece of land. As with any other piece of land the Commonwealth would lease, the Commonwealth reserves the right to exclude any person. That is just the way it is. Anybody who owns and provides land has the capacity to exclude people in one way or another. You are inferring that somehow we will go down the road of excluding them for reasons such as criminal behaviour or that we do not like them. The lease allows people, under common law, to exclude people and to exercise certain rights of the lease—just as they can in respect of any other piece of land in Australia. All I can do is to reiterate that the reason for acquiring the land is to provide infrastructure. That is the government’s clear intention. The nature of the acquisition of land is in accordance with the circumstances of any other lease of land that the Commonwealth would make anywhere in Australia.