This morning Mr Turnbull said the royal commission would be held in conjunction with the Northern Territory government.
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He added: ‘I would also like to take this opportunity to apologise to the community for my wrongs and I can’t wait to get out and make up for them.
The United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund, Northern Territory, has also said that the abuse in the Australian juvenile detention ‘may amount to torture’.
Soon after the report aired NT Chief Minister Adam Giles released a statement saying he “like all Australians. was shocked and disgusted by tonight’s Four Corner’s programme”.
The vision showing Voller handcuffed, hooded and strapped to a mechanical restraint chair where he remained for two hours, was part of an explosive Four Corners investigation, which immediately triggered a royal commission into the abuse of youths in the Northern Territory corrections system.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he would launch a Royal Commission – Australia’s highest form of inquiry – and suggested there had been an institutional coverup of the scandal.
The boy was shown wearing a “spit hood” and being restrained to a chair while he was being detained.
Barbed wire fences surround the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre located near Darwin in the Northern Territory, Australia, July 27, 2016.
“Royal commissions with sweeping terms of reference that go on for years and years often lose their way”, Turnbull said on Wednesday.
Voller, then 17, had a hood placed over his head, and his ankles, wrists and neck were shackled in a detention center in Alice Springs in 2015 after, authorities say, he threatened to hurt himself, ABC reported.
“At the start of this week, Australians were shocked and appalled by the images of mistreatment of children at Don Dale youth detention centre”, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told reporters in Canberra.
“Indigenous youths make up 96 percent of the young prison population in the Northern Territory and indigenous people are overwhelmingly represented in the [territory] prison system across the board”.
When the tear gas incident occurred in 2014, officials said guards had used the chemical to subdue six teens who had staged a riot.
Correctional Services Minister John Elferrink said he had not seen numerous videos including one where guards were saying “I’ll pulverise the f***er” as a young man in isolation was bagging at windows.
The disturbing images of a boy being forcibly hooded and tied to a chair were removed from the social media site because they showed the teenager’s bare bottom.
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“The royal commissioner [will] consider whether any such treatment might have been a breach of any Commonwealth or Northern Territory law, a breach of the Northern Territory’s Duty of Care or other relevant duty, a breach of human rights obligations adopted by Australia or the Northern Territory”.
