The permit system was the mechanism by which the traditional owners of freehold land held in fee simple under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 controlled access to their land and to their communities—that is until the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) removed it from public areas in prescribed communities. Chair of the Northern Land Council Wali Wunungmurra, in Canberra recently to lobby for the reinstatement of the permit system, was quoted by the ABC on 16 September as saying: ‘The permit has a very important role, it’s about our cultural survival. Aboriginal land is private property and we would like to keep it that way.’

Like many other Australians, Aboriginal people living on Aboriginal land want to have control over the degree, nature and purposes of their contact with others. The removal of the permit system from the ‘public’ areas of communities has weakened their ability to do so. The division between ‘public’ and ‘private’ spaces in such communities is not as clear-cut as in other places. For example areas of a settlement, including public spaces such as the shop or the offices of organisations, may be closed following a significant death. The permit system allows the community to manage such occasions. And at most communities there are restricted areas of sacred or ceremonial significance that local people know about but that are invisible to the uninformed visitor’s eye. During the NTER there have been at least two cases where such places have been disturbed by outsiders, the most notorious of which was the installation of a pit toilet on a men’s ceremonial ground.