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The footage, shown on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s investigative programme Four Corners on Monday, was filmed largely at a youth detention centre in the Northern Territory city of Darwin between 2010 and 2015.
The footage presented on the program showed youths being isolated and strapped to mechanical chairs and six boys being tear-gassed, revealing a pattern of abuse, deprivation and punishment of vulnerable children inside Northern Territory youth detention centres.
He said as far as he knew, there was no additional footage screened on Four Corners last night that Territory bureaucrats and MPs didn’t already know about.
At a press conference today NT Chief Minister Adam Giles announced he had taken over the portfolios of Corrections and Justice from John Elferink, the now former minister responsible for young detainees in the Northern Territory, reports Australian media.
“There’s no cover-up, they’ve been fully aware of what’s been going on, the reports show it”, said Priscilla Collins, CEO of the North Australia Aboriginal Justice Agency.
Interviewed on ABC radio Tuesday, Turnbull said he was “deeply shocked – shocked and appalled by the images of mistreatment of children”, Reuters reports.
“We need a proper inquiry and the facts need to be determined and then we can determine whether people should be charged”. “We need to expose the cultural problems, the administrative problems that allowed this type of mistreatment to occur”.
“I want him to know he’s still a person and people still love him and he still has hope for a life”. This and national outrage is what has sparked the establishment of the royal commision, which will hopefully get to the bottom of it all.
The Four Corners program showed footage of teenage offenders stripped naked, assaulted and tear gassed. “But where we have a prison officer who is trying to support a child in youth in detention, and they are continuing to be spat on, I have to also provide a work environment conducive to healthy work practice for those prison officers”.
Turnbull said the inquiry into children in detention would examine both the abuse in the Northern Territory and why authorities failed to reprimand prison officials sooner.
Like all Australians I was shocked and disgusted by tonight’s Four Corner’s program.
“These astronomical figures are symbolic of so much of the disadvantage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people continue to face”.
The revelations have also thrown the Northern Territory government into turmoil just weeks ahead the August election.
The Government was yet to choose a commissioner but the prime minister said it was likely to be a retired judge.
Its Australia director Elaine Pearson said what happened at the Don Dale Centre was “a classic example of how not to deal with troubled youth”.
The royal commission’s terms of reference and commissioner are yet to be decided and it will be set up jointly with the NT government.
In another, a guard is heard saying “I’ll pulverise the f***er” as a youth in isolation bangs at the windows.
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Some Aborigines in the territory called for Giles to be removed, with one wearing a hood over their head with the words “Sack Giles”.
