“The terms of reference of the Royal Commission need to be as broad as possible”.
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NT Chief Minister Adam Giles suggested there was a culture of cover-up within the corrections centre and said the territory would join the federal government in setting up the inquiry. Member of Parliament for Corangamite Sarah Henderson said on Twitter that the abuse shown in the “Four Corners” special amounted to “child torture”.
“It’s offensive that anyone should be treated this way in detention, let alone our precious young people”, said Rev. Mauboy. They were kept locked in their cells for nearly 24 hours a day with no running water, little natural light, and were denied access to school and educational material.
He’s since been moved to another prison but the same guards are on duty there. Closed-circuit footage showed staff stripping, shackling, and teargassing boys who were assigned to the center – some as young as 10.
Other footage also showed Voller kicked and punched to the ground by a guard after he was asked to get off the phone and initially refused.
That episode occurred in August 2014. “Start learning about it.'”, he said at the time. But the video shows some of them playing cards when the tear-gassing begins, and the entire episode appears to have taken place within a secure area.
The revelations cast a new spotlight on Australia’s treatment of Indigenous people in general, and also on the NT government’s hard-line approach to crime.
The Northern Territory News headlined its front-page “Sack the lot of them”, while The Australian broadsheet said in an editorial: “Juvenile detention horror a window on our shame”. A police negotiator had been called to speak with the prisoners, a spokesperson for the Northern Territory Correctional Services Department said.
“When kids arm themselves with broken glass, when kids arm themselves with metal bars, then reasonable force has to be brought to bear upon them, to subdue them”, Elferink said during the program.
The Northern Territory has the highest rate of youth detention in the country, and 97 percent of its juvenile detainees are Aboriginal.
“It seems as if this abuse is built into the very core of the system”, he said in a statement, calling for the immediate release of one of his clients, who is now in an adult prison, and all children imprisoned in the Northern Territory.
Guard: “Might get the restraint chair possibly as well”. He’s tied up, manacled and left there for hours.
A coalition of Northern Territory Aboriginal organisations called for the national government to dissolve the territory government, which it has the authority to do.
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But Lawrence said that it was important that the royal commission be fiercely independent.
