Country Liberals (CLP) candidate Tina MacFarlane has sold her cattle station to a forestry company two-and-a-half years after the Northern Territory Government granted her station a water licence for growing crops.

The Northern Land Council (NLC) has called for an independent inquiry into the NT Government's allocation of water licences after Ms MacFarlane, the CLP candidate for the seat of Lingiari, sold the Stylo cattle station to Tropical Forestry Services (TFS), which owns and runs sandalwood plantations.

Key points: CLP candidate sells cattle station to forestry group

CLP candidate sells cattle station to forestry group Sale raises further questions over candidate's controversial 2013 water allocation licence

Sale raises further questions over candidate's controversial 2013 water allocation licence NLC calls for inquiry into NT Government's water licence allocation process

The Northern Land Council's chief executive, Joe Morrison, said the sale exposed the lack of planning and transparency in water allocation decisions and strengthened the need for a review.

"I think there's a desperate need for a review and an independent inquiry into the NT Government's process for allocating water licences," he said.

TFS confirmed it had acquired all 9,500 hectares of Stylo Station, near Mataranka, 370 kilometres south-east of Darwin, and the sale included the licence to extract 5,800 megalitres of water a year for 10 years from the Tindall aquifer.

Ms McFarlane was also the party's candidate for the seat of Lingiari in 2013 when the Northern Territory Government approved her application for the water extraction licence for agriculture.

NT independent MLA Gerry Wood said he was concerned the licence had not been used for growing crops.

"The Minister said, 'if you don't use your licence, you lose it', now as far as I know there haven't been any substantial crops come out of Stylo Station," Mr Wood said.

He said companies should not be able to profit from water licences granted by the Government for free.

"That water licence was given for free, so when Stylo was sold, was the value of that water licence included in the sale of the land?" he asked.

"If you're going to sell that water for a profit through the value of the land, surely that money should come back to the public purse because you got it for free in the first place."

In a statement Ms MacFarlane told the ABC "we have received no special or inconsistent treatment".

The ABC reported in June that Ms MacFarlane said she intended to continue owning and running Stylo "into the foreseeable future".

"Stylo has not been sold," she said in a statement at the time.

"We will remain owning and running Stylo in its normal manner into the foreseeable future and no event has occurred which will alter that fact."

The Northern Territory's Minister for Land Resource Management, Willem Westra van Holthe, was also not available to speak on the matter.

In 2013, seven months into the Country Liberals' term, the then-water controller Rod Applegate overturned a previous decision, made under the former Labor government in 2010, to refuse Ms MacFarlane's water licence application.

Mr Applegate approved the licence application from Ms MacFarlane and her husband, saying the department was now using refined water table modelling data.

As a result, he said, the total pool of water available to be allocated had almost doubled — from about 19,500 megalitres to 36,000 megalitres.

The ABC has requested an interview with the water controller, but in a statement issued on Wednesday afternoon, the Department of Land Resource Management said the water controller was "unavailable".

A spokesman for the department said it would be "impractical for any property or business owner to incur a penalty when selling a property or business when they have not acted illegally".