A council managing a Crown Reserve under the Crown Lands Act 1989 (NSW) has no power to grant leases or licences except in compliance with the statutory preconditions including Ministerial consent. No estoppel can override these statutory requirements, regardless of the duration of acquiescence in occupation. Councils managing Crown Reserves do not owe fiduciary duties to individual occupants, even vulnerable homeless persons, because such duties would be inconsistent with the council's public duties as reserve trust manager and would be impermissibly prescriptive rather than proscriptive.
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