If Aboriginal leader Galarrwuy Yunupingu was truly concerned about a croc taking one of his children, he wouldn't keep one as a pet, a tribunal has heard.
The Northern Territory's most influential Aboriginal leader and powerful ceremony man on Friday lost a legal bid to own and use a firearm.
The 61-year-old had given evidence to the NT Firearms Tribunal that he needed to use guns to feed his family and defend them from wild animals such as buffaloes and crocodiles.
But NT police lawyer Pete Barr said there was inconsistencies in the evidence given by the former Australian of the Year, who lives with his family at a remote outstation in Arnhem Land.
"You might find it odd that Mr Yunupingu feeds a crocodile, his pet, and then complains there is a danger of crocodiles (to his children)," he said.
Mr Yunupingu's lawyer John Lawrence said that crocodiles were significant to his clan and he had a healthy respect for the beasts.
"They're not like humans," Mr Yunupingu told the tribunal on Thursday.
"You can't trust them."
Mr Lawrence said his client lived "very much culturally in two worlds".
"He wants fresh food and that's how he obtains it, by hunting," he said.
"He doesn't want to eat frozen food anymore (and) he hasn't made that up."
Mr Yunupingu had his firearms licence revoked in 2006 when his youngest wife took out a domestic violence order against him.
Although the order was later quashed, the former head of the Northern Land Council was forced to surrender six firearms and his licence after it emerged that 11 of his guns had gone missing.
He told the tribunal that he had given some away, dumped faulty guns in a billabong while another was stolen.
Mr Yunupingu claimed that at the time he did not realise that he was breaching the gun law, which was strengthened after the Port Arthur massacre.
While police lawyer Pete Barr stopped short of telling the inquest that Mr Yunupingu had lied in his evidence, he said the information provided by him was "clearly wrong".
"And if it is wrong it means his explanation as to being more responsible after 1997 is also incorrect," Mr Barr said.
"Firearms were given away or disposed of at a time when he ought to have known better."
Mr Yunupingu, who is a prominent Arnhem Land leader and the head ceremonial man for up to 1,000 Yolngu people, was appealing a decision in August 2008 to refuse him a shooters licence.
But his application failed in the Darwin Magistrates Court on Friday.
"The tribunal is of the view that the appeal will be dismissed," said Magistrate Dick Wallace, who said the full reasons for the decision will be published in two weeks.
Outside the court, Mr Yunupingu refused to say if he would continue his legal bid to own and use guns. He also declined to comment on how the tribunal's ruling would impact on his traditional lifestyle.
"I am just totally disappointed," he told reporters.
"It jeopardises a few things."
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