How much did they know? NT Minister sacked over juvenile detention ‘torture’

DUMPED pollie has had his office vandalised and family threatened after the shocking mistreatment of children in a detention facility was revealed.

THE Minister at the centre of the child detention scandal engulfing the Northern Territory has had his electorate office vandalised and says threats have been made against his family.

On Tuesday afternoon, the NT’s Chief Minister Adam Giles announced he had removed John Elferink as Corrections Minister, installing himself in the role.

Since then, Mr Elferink has gone to ground refusing to answer questions or release a statement about the troubling incidents at Darwin’s Don Dale Youth Corrections Centre.

Video of an Australian teenager strapped into a mechanical restrains chair, wearing a “spit hood”, and footage of boys being sprayed with tear gas after spending hours locked in solitary cells were aired in during ABC’s Four Corners on Monday night.

By this morning, graffiti had appeared on Mr Elferink’s electorate office in Darwin.

A spokesman for the minister, who will retain is position as Attorney General and holds on to the mental health, justice, and family and children’s health portfolios, told news.com.au the office had been “trashed” and “serious threats” had been made against Mr Elferink and his family.

The Minister had gone to the police and would not be making any comment on the scandal, he said.

MLA John Elferink's office was defaced after video footage was released showing the barbaric treatment of juveniles at Don Dale Detention Centre in Berrimah, NT.

Addressing reporters in Darwin, Mr Giles blamed the scandal on a “culture of cover-up” within the territory’s juvenile corrections system.

Senior government figures in the Northern Territory earlier described footage showing the teargassing and torture of children in a Darwin detention facility as shocking, but there’s no way some of them could really be shocked.

The disturbing images and other details of the treatment of children in correctional facilities prompted a “deeply shocked” Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to quickly call for a Royal Commission into the treatment of children at the in Darwin, where the footage was collected.

Minister for Corrections and Attorney General John Elferink officially opened the new health clinic in remote community Elliott.

NT Government figures, including Mr Giles and Mr Elferink, backed the call and expressed their own shock, but not everyone was buying it.

Mr Giles said he had never seen the footage shown in the Four Corners report before it aired on Monday night, a claim the program’s executive producer said “beggars belief”.

This beggars belief. It was the cctv vision from within the prison system that @adamgiles' government runs #4Corners https://t.co/QlWAOZ6al9

— Sally Neighbour (@neighbour_s) July 26, 2016

Revelations that tear gas was being used in NT children’s correctional facilities were published in a report released by the Territory’s children’s commissioner last year.

The head of indigenous advocacy group the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency, Priscilla Collins, said she had seen the video of a hooded boy shackled to a chair in Don Dale “a few years ago”, and that the NT Government would have had access to the footage.

She told Sky News her organisation had been calling for action by the NT Government for years, and that there had been several reports presented to government and not acted on.

NT Opposition Leader Michael Gunner appeared to accuse the government of a cover-up, saying they had access all the materials exposed in the Four Corners report.

“The NT Government, they have had full access to all of this. They are the ones we have been arguing with when we called for the Chief Minister to sack the Corrections Minister for a range of failings including this,” he said.

Footage taken at Don Dale Youth Detention Centre in August 2014 shows corrections officers tear-gassing six kids — most of whom were in their cells — wrestling them to the ground and calling them “little f****rs”.

Federal Labor MP Linda Burney, the first indigenous woman elected to the lower house, said how much the government knew was the key question.

“I want to know as does everyone else ... did or did they not know this was going on?” she said on ABC radio.

“It is just inconceivable to me that someone that has worked in government that has been head of a government agency, that there was not knowledge of these practices and these instances in the Northern Territory, and that needs to be exposed.

“I do not believe that they did not know.”

NT Chief Minister maintains he had not seen footage of children being abused in the Darwin correction facility before the ABC program aired.

There have been several calls for the NT Government to be thrown out and involved ministers to be sacked.

Indigenous leader and Labor Senator Pat Dodson has called earlier called for Mr Elferink to stand down as Attorney General.

“The person who is responsible for the oversight of these duties and responsibilities, if they’ve got any honour about them, ought to stand aside voluntarily or they ought to be sat aside by their chief minister,” he said.

“These kids have been subject to this torture and mistreatment since 2010 basically, and some of them repeatedly, and you can’t allow the people who have been in charge of this ... to remain in charge.”

Prominent members of the legal community have called for the NT Government to have “as little contact with possible” with the running of the royal commission.

“It needs to be taken out of the hands of the NT Government straight away. They are proven to lack capacity, proven to not be honest with the public about the facts,” Jared Sharp, a senior lawyer with the North Australia Aboriginal Justice Agency, told AAP.

John Lawrence, a former vice president of the NT Bar Association, called for the commission head and investigators to be brought in from interstate.

“There should be as little contact with anyone associated with the NT Government as possible,” he added.

Mr Lawrence also believes Mr Elferink had been “asleep” on the job, given the territory Children’s Commissioner had published a report a year ago raising similar concerns.

“If he has failed to look at the direct best evidence then he’s just asleep on the job, derelict, negligent,” he told AAP. “One way or the other he is totally unfit for office.”

The involvement of NT authorities has not been the only criticism of the hastily announced Royal Commission.

The report showed children being abused by guards at Don Dale. Picture: ABC

Mr Turnbull said the royal commission should concentrate on the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre specifically, and would not be expanded at this stage to other centres.

“There may be other matters connected to that to be looked into, but it’s very important with inquiries that they have a clear focus,” he told ABC radio.

“We will get to the bottom of this swiftly and we will identify the lessons that need to be learned.”

The moment Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced a Royal Commission into the treatment of children at a Northern Territory juvenile detention centre, refugee advocates responded calling for the commission to be expanded to take in the wider issues of treatment of children in detention, including on Nauru and Manus Island.

Former Australian Greens leader Christine Milne responded saying the Coalition was acting “blind and deaf” to Nauru.

Other high-profile advocates, including Network Ten’s Paul Bongiorno and Crikey’s Bernard Keane, drew a similar connection between the two issues.

There have been called for the royal commission to be widened to take in other facilities including offshore detention centres. Picture: ABC/AAP

Speaking on ABC’s Q & A last night, the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, said the conditions were worse than she had seen in asylum-seeker detention centres.

“My response is very likely to be that of so many Australians who will have watched this program — absolute horror at watching the treatment of these children and to know this is done in the name of Australia.

“If one of us were to have been found to have treated our children in this way we would probably be charged with a criminal offence and the children taken away from us,” she said.

“It’s an extremely distressing piece of footage to look at and I have visited many detention centres, sadly, I have never seen conditions of that kind and I have never seen people treated in that way.”

Facebook has become an unlikely target of criticism over its decision to remove a Four Corners video of children being abused in detention, because it “contained child nudity”.

The social media giant said in a statement to the ABC the videos had been reported by users, and their team “reviewed and removed them for containing child nudity”.

Facebook has since republished one of the videos, but declined to restore the second.

“Our Community Standards do not allow any nudity of minors to be shared on our services, even if they are shared with the purpose of condemning it,” the statement read.

Facebook confirms it deleted the #4Corners video of kids abused in detention because it 'contained child nudity' pic.twitter.com/sS29obGLmb

— Sally Neighbour (@neighbour_s) July 26, 2016