Dylan Voller: Turnbull pressed to broaden  juvenile abuse inquiry

Malcolm Turnbull was last night under pressure to broaden the ­inquiry into abuses in youth detention.

Dylan Voller allegedly suffered horrific abuse at the hands of staff at a Darwin detention centre.

Malcolm Turnbull was last night under pressure to broaden the ­inquiry into abuses in youth detention, with senior indigenous figures warning a narrow royal commission risked repeating previous investigations into ­abuses in the NT which failed to deliver the change required to protect vulnerable children.

Protesters marched on the Alice Springs office of Chief Minister Adam Giles yesterday to ­demand he resign, after images of children being tear-gassed, stripped naked and knocked to the floor aired on the ABC’s Four Corners program on Monday night.

Mr Giles sacked his corrections minister, who he said had been working to improve NT prisons. But he refused to condemn the use of a mechanical restraint chair the Giles government legalised earlier this year — a device likened to something from Abu Ghraib, the notorious US-run prison in Iraq.

The CCTV footage, revealed less than two weeks before the NT government is due to go into caretaker mode ahead of the August 27 poll, forced the scandal-plagued Country Liberal Party into damage control and its leader to pivot away from a tough law and order campaign targeted at his party’s base.

The Prime Minister announced his proposals for a snap royal commission in partnership with the NT government early yesterday. He said he had been “deeply shocked” by the footage and promised to “get to the bottom” of what had happened.

“We need to know what has happened, why it happened, why it was able to happen, what is the culture that enabled this to occur, what lessons we take from it and how we can ensure that it never ever happens again,” Mr Turnbull said. “Every child in our justice system must be treated with ­humanity and respect at all times. The two governments will move quickly to finalise terms of reference and recommend an eminent person to conduct the inquiry.”

President of the Human Rights Commission Gillian Triggs described the scenes of abuse as “shameful” and “appalling” and an embarrassment to Australia.

“It looks as though laws have been broken,” she said.

Mr Turnbull said a royal commission was needed because previous inquiries had “failed to identify the nature and extent of the behaviour”.

Attorney-General George Brandis said the royal commission would examine the juvenile justice system in the Northern Territory, focusing on the Don Dale centre. “The terms of reference will be broad enough to examine abuses and practices across the juvenile detention system in the Northern Territory,” he told the ABC’s 7.30 program last night. “We don’t propose to take it beyond the Northern Territory because that’s the particular problem that has been exposed.”

But that is unlikely to satisfy Labor senator Patrick Dodson, who warned the problems were not confined to the NT, while the chair of the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council, Warren Mundine, also said there could be cause to broaden the inquiry’s scope beyond the NT.

“We need to deal with the ­issues of juveniles within juvenile detention centres,” he said.

“I sat on a number of committees over the years and I have not seen any evidence that locking up kids works. It is a training ground, a university for bigger criminals going into the larger jails outside.

“We have a cultural problem within the corrective services ­industry and I wouldn’t be surprised if it goes further than the Northern Territory.”

Indigenous Coalition frontbencher Ken Wyatt said the royal commission should be the start of a broad-ranging look at the juvenile justice system in the Northern Territory. “The decision by the PM and the Attorney-General to hold a royal commission I think is the appropriate step,” he said.

“It will go to what occurred in Don Dale and then there is the ­potential for it to look at other ­issues that arise out of the inquiry.”

Mr Wyatt, the Assistant Minister for Health, said the images of children bound with a “spit hood” on their head didn’t look good. “We do have an obligation in the way we treat our children,” he said. “Having those visual images go worldwide through the media outlets does not paint our country in a good light.” His comments came as it emerged the hoods are also used in Western Australia.

But the sister of one of the boys allegedly subjected to years of sustained abuse and deliberate targeting by guards, Kirra Voller, described the Prime Minister’s plan was a “cop out”. “It’s the government’s way of shifting blame,” Ms Voller said. “I’m angry because they knew about it (and didn’t do enough to intervene).”

A coalition of indigenous groups gathered in Darwin yesterday called on the Prime Minister to intervene and sack the NT government. Former NT Children’s Commissioner, Howard Bath, who in 2012 conducted an investigation into the Dylan Voller’s mistreatment treatment said he was “extremely disappointed” his report had been suppressed by the NT government.

Official government and media reports dating back as far as 2011 have identified patterns of abuse in the NT’s juvenile justice system. Virtually every incident covered by Four Corners had ­already been publicly described, and some of the footage was available on the internet when the program aired. Several prison officers have been investigated and cleared by police or charged and acquitted at trial.

Nonetheless Mr Giles and other NT officials, including Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw, claimed they had been caught unawares. “This vision was new to me,” Mr Giles said. “Over time there has most certainly been a culture of cover-up within the corrections system.”

He sought to blame the NT Labor opposition, while also announcing a long-sought new juvenile detention facility would finally be built and a new inspector appointed to oversee the NT corrections system.

Additional reporting: John Lyons, Samantha Hutchinson, Sam Buckingham-Jones, AAP