On 25 July, the ABC – Australia’s version of the BBC – aired a terrific program of Four Corners, exploring how guards in the Northern Territory (NT) were brutalising children in a juvenile detention facility called Don Dale. In one instance, six boys were kept in inhumane conditions in solitary confinement for 23 and a half hours a day, for 15 days. When one boy broke out of his cell, into a larger but still confined space, one guard suggested they let him “come through”, as he would “pulverise the little fucker”. They then decided to “gas the lot of them”. The Corrections Commissioner said “I don’t mind how much chemical you use”. In one cell, two children were playing with cards. The former Children’s Commissioner for the NT observed the boys, “were so terrified they thought they were gonna die. And they said their goodbyes to each other huddled behind a mattress at the back of their cell.”
That’s just one of the incidents shown on Four Corners. Others included various instances of one particular boy being attacked by guards, and being repeatedly forcibly stripped naked. In one scene that brought international attention for looking like Guantanamo Bay, a young boy was strapped to a chair, with a hood over his face.
The shock
The response to the show was public displays of shock. The Prime Minister announced a Royal Commission to inquire into what had happened, as he was “shocked and appalled” at the scenes at Don Dale. Adam Giles, Chief Minister for the NT, said he was “shocked” at scenes like a child being struck, or being thrown down and stripped naked, which he called “quite horrific”. The Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion said that “I wish I’d known”. Alas, it had not “piqued my interest”. He later admitted he had been briefed about the tear-gassing incident.
