Speaking in the federal parliament on Friday, Mr Scullion said conversations with council members had revealed their misgivings were such that confidence in the NLC’s governance had hit an all time low.

“Members of the council and some members of the executive have been speaking to me for some time and it’s very sad to have seen the huge level of confidence people have had in this particular land council move to somewhat disquiet,” he said.

“I’ve also called the meeting because I was very keen that all full council members have access to the report of the investigation which has now been completed into the land council and that was conducted by their internal audit committee.”

Mr Scullion said the audit report raised “significant governance issues” and “allegations of conflict of interest among its executive council”.

The announcement was a bombshell for many outsiders who had watched the NLC seemingly tear itself apart since the shock sacking of already outgoing chief executive Joe Morrison in November, amid allegations of misconduct and financial misappropriation, which he strongly denied.

Mr Morrison was subsequently replaced by interim chief executive Rick Fletcher who was himself knifed just two months later in a snap coup which saw Jak Ah Kit locked out of the NLC’s offices before ultimately taking the helm last month.

But Mr Scullion’s intervention came as no surprise to Paul Henwood.

PAUL Henwood is a Muk Muk Marranunggu traditional owner of land south of Darwin and a member of the NLC’s Darwin Daly Wagait regional council — or he was until a week ago.

Mr Henwood’s faith in the NLC’s executive council had been so rocked by Mr Morrison’s dismissal that soon afterwards he formed a “members delegation” which comprised almost a third of all full council members.

The purpose of the delegation was to push back against what they saw as a hostile takeover following Joe Morrison’s dismissal and to advocate for access to the audit report that would later prompt Mr Scullion’s intervention.

It was this activism that Mr Henwood believes led to his summary removal from his council position, which he says was conducted without due process and without the approval of the traditional owners who elected him.

Following a hostile meeting of the influential Sea Country Working Group — in which Mr Henwood says moves were made to oust him from his role on that committee — he received a letter notifying him he was no longer a member of the NLC.

The letter, co-signed by Jak Ah Kit and NLC chairman Samuel Bush-Blanasi, said a board meeting of the Twin Hills Aboriginal Corporation (which sponsored Mr Henwood’s election to the NLC in 2016) had “unanimously resolved to rescind and revoke its nomination of you as the NLC member for the Darwin South West (Litchfield) ward, effective immediately”.

“Accordingly your name has been removed from the register of members of the NLC,” it reads.

“Your cessation as member means that you are no longer a member of the Darwin/Daly Regional Council … or the Sea Country Working Group (established by the NLC to assist in relation to the ‘Blue Mud Bay’ negotiations).”

Following the board meeting, held just days before his regional council was due to meet to hold a confidence vote on the executive, Mr Henwood showed up to the Darwin Daly Wagait meeting anyway.

It was there he says Dr Ah Kit and his personal legal adviser, Ron Levy, sealed his fate.

“They said to me ‘We will hear Twin Hill’s argument and then we will hear yours and then Ah Kit and Levy will advise the chairman of what decision is to be made’,” he said.

Mr Henwood says from that point the result was a forgone conclusion but should not have been as Twin Hill cannot speak for the traditional owners he is supposed to represent.

“(Twin Hill) cannot elect a regional delegate, they have a corporation which is our money-maker for our cattle station, they can support the nomination … but they can’t sack me or reappoint a person without first having the TOs nominate, in a democratic way, a member that they want to represent all TOs on the regional council,” he said.

“I have a majority of traditional owners supporting my nomination to the committee and on that basis I refuse to be replaced.”

But Dr Ah Kit disputes this version of events, instead characterising Mr Henwood’s removal from the council as a dispute between “two competing families”.

He says the two families have variously been in control of Twin Hill at different times over the years and at the time of the recent annual general meeting the other family was in control and there were no longer any Henwoods on the board.

“Within their rights, they wrote to me when I was at Nhulunbuy eight days ago and said ‘Here’s a copy of our resolution, we had a minuted formal AGM under the rule book and we want you to take Paul Henwood off the council and replace him with (our) nominee’,” he said.

Dr Ah Kit says Mr Henwood’s claim to have the support of the TOs came too late and should have been presented at the AGM.

“Paul comes to the (regional) meeting with 40 signatures saying ‘They want me to remain on the council, well it’s too late for that,” he said.

“That’s not my fault, that’s your fault for not organising your family and getting the numbers.”

WHEN Mr Scullion revealed his decision to call a full council meeting last week, a clearly unimpressed Jak Ah Kit hit back hard.

As part of his full-throated repudiation of the need for such a meeting, Dr Ah Kit cited the seven regional council meetings he’d been crisscrossing the NT to hold since his appointment.

Dr Ah Kit said all of the meetings had passed resolutions expressing “full confidence” in the executive and “rejecting any attempt to call an extraordinary full council meeting”.

But those meetings were another bone of contention for Paul Henwood, and fellow full council members Wayne Wauchope and Tibby Quall. Echoing Mr Scullion’s comments in parliament, all three men say the resolutions passed by the regional councils were ill-informed as they occurred without access to the audit report, which Dr Ah Kit has refused to provide. “Many members question how informed resolutions can be made by regional councils when the issues outlined in the internal audit report are not represented to the council members,” Mr Henwood said.

Mr Quall says the executives are now “running the show” and should have held a full council meeting without having to be scolded by the minister. “We were all in our communities asking (that) a full council meeting should be made rather than all these (regional council) meetings,” he said.

“It’s the full council that runs the NLC, not the staff of the NLC, they’re only the staff, the decisions have to be made by the full council.”

Mr Wauchope agrees, saying all council members should have had access to the report “so they could make their own decisions”.

“Why didn’t they call a full council, what were they hiding?” he said.

“I can tell you what they were hiding, the bloody audit report.”

Dr Ah Kit said yesterday the council members were not given access to the report as it was not “strategically wise” to do so at the time but he would now make it available.

“They can read that and have a look at that and um and ah and that’s their entitlement,” he said.

Dr Ah Kit says he will now likely also release a separate QC’s report which was a “scathing attack” on the audit committee’s assessment.

“If I release our QC’s advice people will have an option to also say ‘OK we’ll look at this, weigh this up and see who’s right or wrong,” he said.

Dr Ah Kit has previously cited the cost of holding a full council meeting as a factor mitigating against it, but all three councillors are convinced the round of regional meetings has cost far more than a single meeting of all members.

“Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent on a round of extraordinary (regional) council meetings, primarily held to avoid calling a full council meeting which would have cost much less,” Mr Henwood said.

“Many council members are wondering why all of this effort and expense has been expended on avoiding the full council meeting if there is nothing to answer for.

“Executive council have deployed substantial NLC resources to hold these regional council meetings designed to stifle (critical) comments while those with legitimate concerns have no access to any resources. Once again voices from the bush are silenced.”

Dr Ah Kit yesterday maintained the regional council meetings had been budgeted for and it was “not an issue”.

LAST month, the NT News reported on concerns held by NLC staffers about the role held by the interim chief executive’s personal legal adviser, Ron Levy.

It’s a concern Paul Henwood and Wayne Wauchope share, saying Mr Levy is by Jak Ah Kit’s side at meetings when that role could be filled by NLC principal legal adviser Michael O’Donnell.

They say the reason for Mr Levy’s presence has not been made clear and they are concerned council members are being denied access to legal advice.

“Ron Levy’s role is unclear and there has not been any terms of reference provided to clarify this, I understand that he is a consultant therefore he would not have any authority or delegation to provide legal advice to the members of the council, in my opinion — nor should he when the NLC has a large legal practice,” Mr Henwood said.

“We have massive legal weight in the NLC yet we’re prevented from using that or getting any advice other than hearing Levy and Ah Kit.”

Mr Wauchope also echoes the concerns expressed to the NT News that Mr Levy had recently acted in court matters on the opposite side of the bar table to NLC lawyers.

“He’s got clients that he represents and he’s taken the land council to court so you tell me if that’s a contradiction in terms,” he said.

But Dr Ah Kit said he had employed Mr Levy as “an agent for me on a retainer to give me legal advice” and he was entitled to choose which lawyer would accompany him to meetings.

“I’ve explained to Michael O’Donnell and others to tell him to let his legal section know ‘You are still the principal legal officer, everything carries on as normal, except my agent Ron, you’ll need to respond to him and he’ll be in charge on his retainer to head up the legal section’,” he said.

“Michael has said to me, ‘I don’t think the legal section likes it’, at my first branch managers meeting, and I said to him ‘Michael, if you’re not happy you’re quite welcome to go out the door and look for a job somewhere else’.”

Dr Ah Kit says Mr Levy has declared his conflicts of interest to him but they would not be made known to council members, saying “I will keep him away from any of that stuff”. “I will make the decisions to say ‘Ron you’ve got a conflict of interest or you worked on a project some years ago, I don’t think you should go anywhere near this, in fact I’m instructing you — you stay out of the room’, so that’s the way it is,” he said. “It is not for me to disclose the conflict of interest stuff to the council, I have in my job a separation of powers, the council is the council and the interim CEO … has to run this place in a professional manner.

“I have to protect the confidentiality of the people that work for me, there are matters I can disclose in a general sense to the full council or to the regional councils or whatever but there are matters that I can’t and I won’t and this is one of those.”

Meanwhile, a senior NLC lawyer Mr Henwood and Mr Wauchope had trusted, David Avery, has handed in his resignation — but Dr Ah Kit says he gave him no reason for quitting.

“All I know is Mr Avery put his resignation in and he is to go within the next three weeks,” Dr Ah Kit said.

“He did not give a reason to me, I haven’t spoken to him, I haven’t met up with him, all I saw was his resignation in writing.”

BOTH Paul Henwood and Wayne Wauchope say they were saddened by Joe Morrison’s sudden departure, after members voted for him to see out his term until March this year following his resignation.

They say Mr Morrison’s reputation was unfairly tarnished by a “sex scandal” and they worry about the NLC’s future under its current leadership.

“He’s just a man, he’s just human, you know, we make mistakes, obviously that was one of them, but they highlighted it and that was his demise and I don’t think it was fair what they did to him,” Mr Henwood says.

“It’s just remarkably sad how things have just gone like this from going forward to just going backwards remarkably so fast.

“I’m not going to have my kids be confused and dictated to and manipulated and controlled in the future. This has to stop now.”