The royal commission was a waste of money

SEVENTY million dollars is a hell of a lot of money. In a year, it’s enough to pay for 700 teachers, or 700 nurses, or to build 140 remote houses. And it’s the same amount of money the Northern Territory and Commonwealth governments spent on a report that most now agree is not worth the paper it was written on

Former chief minister Adam Giles called for an inquiry too quickly, Matt Cunningham writes

SEVENTY million dollars is a hell of a lot of money. In a year, it’s enough to pay for 700 teachers, or 700 nurses, or to build 140 remote houses. It’s enough money to build a state-of-the-art youth justice centre with all the bells and whistles.

And it’s the same amount of money the Northern Territory and Commonwealth governments spent on a report that most now agree is not worth the paper it was written on.

The NT Government’s decision this week to scrap its plans for a new youth justice centre at Pinelands is surely the last piece of evidence ­required that the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory was a masterclass in how to best throw $70 million of taxpayers’ money down the drain.

It has served little purpose but to line the pockets of southern lawyers who flew in for the picnic, and tie the current government to completely unrealistic expectations of what it could and should be delivering.

The Government said this week it was still going to look for another site for a new youth justice facility. But with no timeline for such a project and tenders released for continued services at Don Dale for at least the next three years, a new youth justice centre is now about as likely as a bridge to Mandorah.

Even the peak organisations who once screamed so loudly about the unsuitability of Don Dale are now saying it can be brought up to scratch with a few renovations.

Closing Don Dale was one of the key recommendations of the Royal Commission. But with that plan now on ice it’s worth now re-examining how we came to have this inquiry in the first place.

The images broadcast in the Four Corners report, Australia’s Shame, shocked a nation. But were they an accurate reflection of what had happened in our youth justice system, or, more importantly, a fair account of the actions taken to fix the system after it reached crisis point in 2014 when six teenagers were sprayed with tear gas at the old Don Dale Detention Centre?

Former corrections minister John Elferink has described the Four Corners program as more like a hyped-up episode of A Current Affair.

And while the subject matter was no doubt far more serious than dodgy used car salesmen, Elferink’s point about the approach Four Corners took to reporting this story has merit.

Last week the ABC’s Media Watch program scoffed at Channel 9’s 60 Minutes for writing to a rogue sperm donor and telling him it was going to do a positive story on him, only to give him the royal stitch up. But this is exactly what Four Corners did to Elferink.

In a letter its ­reporter sent to him when requesting an interview, it said: “Based on our research, the Northern Territory is proactively trying to make things better. From Sentenced to a Job, in-prison education programs, reducing reoffending rates, restraining the growth of prisoners, to barbecues being planned inside Don Dale to teach the ­juveniles about cooking.

“Under your tenure as Minister, a new adult prison has been built, juvenile offenders have been moved to the facility at Berrimah, child protection reviews have been launched and a new Corrections Commissioner has been appointed.

“Minister Elferink, this is a significant legacy. It is also your legacy.”

It went on to say how important it was to show this work and that a program of the standing of Four Corners had not interest in “hatchet jobs”.

But there weren’t too many clips of the Don Dale barbecues or in-prison education programs that made it to air.

Four Corners did, however, have time for some shots of Elferink riding his Harley-Davidson. The legacy Elferink now has to deal with are the threats against his family that continue to this day.

Some will argue the former minister’s own ego was his undoing — that he should have known that when Four Corners comes calling it’s not because it wants to do a puff piece on what a fine job a corrections minister is doing. But that doesn’t excuse the obvious deceit he was subjected to.

Four Corners shouldn’t, however, be lumped with all of the blame for the royal commission. It was as much due to the panic of the politicians that followed. Within hours of the program going to air, then Chief Minister Adam Giles had called for the inquiry, and by the time most people had finished their breakfast the next morning, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had obliged.

These were the actions of two leaders clearly under pressure, whose only interest was to try to kill the political fallout from that program as quickly as possible. Giles was just weeks from an election he was certain to lose and Turnbull was clinging on to the Liberal leadership after holding on to power by just one seat at the federal election held just a few weeks earlier.

Had Turnbull not been so panicked, he might have taken the time to ask a few questions. Had he done so he would have been told just 18 months earlier the NT Government had commissioned its own inquiry into its youth justice system. That inquiry — headed by New South Wales juvenile justice expert ­Michael Vita — made 16 practical recommendations. They included improved staff training, the replacement of casual workers with permanent staff, the introduction of evidence-based and meaningful offence-based programs and improved staff-to-detainee ratios. It also found with the right investment the existing Don Dale could be a fit-for-purpose facility, at least in the medium term.

If it’s looking for a way forward, the NT Government could do worse than to go back to Michael Vita’s 2015 report. It cost taxpayers $50,000. That’s about $69.95 million less than the royal commission. ­Imagine what the Territory could do with that money now.