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.
The shock of politicians was always hard
to take seriously. My colleague at New
Matilda Amy McQuire observed
that “Children gassed” had been the front page of the Koori Mail in September last year. This was in response to the
Children’s Commissioner Colleen Gwynne publicly releasing her report
on the tear-gassing incident in September 2015. She quoted from the footage,
but was not able to publicly release it. Her recommendations were ignored. There
are a slew
of other reports on the mistreatment of children in juvenile detention in
the NT that were also ignored, along with other reports on Aboriginal
over-representation in juvenile detention in Australia.
In one incident from the program, a boy was
grabbed by the throat and hurled to a bed by a burly guard, as two other men
stripped him completely naked and took his possessions. At the time, the boy
complained about the guard’s use of force. It was upheld
by the Magistrates Court. It was then upheld again on appeal to the Supreme
Court. The finest legal minds of the NT decided that this was a reasonable use
of force, “not excessive”, and a “low level” of physical. Footage of the
incident aired on the NT’s ABC after the judgment. The Corrections Commissioner
boldly announced that “the staff acted appropriately”, “I support them”, and
that he “will not tolerate young people spitting on my staff”. The boy was
supposedly stripped as a protective measure, because he had threatened
self-harm.
Though Giles was Chief Minister then, he
claimed to have somehow missed all this.
The systemic rot
Most of what was shown on Four Corners was not only on the public
record, but had been vocally defended, and even institutionalised by the NT
government. For example, the use of the restraint
chair had been reported on last year by the ABC. Earlier this year, the NT
Minister for Corrections had introduced a bill to formally legalise and
entrench the use of restraint chairs specifically against children. In his
second reading speech, he warned that children in custody had become
“increasingly violent, dangerous and irresponsible”.
Solicitor Peter O’Brien observed
that the NT government had created “a political atmosphere in which this kind
of abuse became normalised… Politicians competed to demonise youth delinquency
and to drive a singular focus upon being as merciless as possible, with
promises of tougher sentences, police powers and bail laws.” The NT News similarly ridiculed Giles’
“crocodile tears”, given his long record of tough on crime rhetoric. His party
had claimed in 2012 that Don Dale “was a place where kids played ‘video games’
and needed tougher love.” Though he responded to the video of a child in the
restraint chair and hood over his face by expressing discomfort, “Just four
months ago his Cabinet approved its use on children. What did he think it was
going to be used for? Wheelchair basketball?”
The
new Royal Commission
The abuses at Don Dale are the tip of
the iceberg. Yet though we already have reports on what to do about Don Dale,
the Federal Government has restricted
its royal commission to the NT. It decided on the royal commissioner and
its terms of reference without consulting Aboriginal groups in the NT. Instead,
they consulted Mick Gooda, Warren Mundine, and Giles. This brains trust
appointed Brian Martin, a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the
Northern Territory.
He resigned within a week, as peak
Aboriginal organisations in the NT responded to his appointment by saying they
were “hurt and furious” at the appointment. They observed his demonstrable lack
of independence, having “sat at the apex” of the system that had been
imprisoning Aboriginal youths. Martin’s judgment also didn’t inspire much
confidence.
In July 2009, a group of white men drove
along a dry river bed in Alice Springs, driving at Aboriginal campers and
forcing them to flee. Aside from the fun of terrorising them with their car,
the men got out of the car and yelled racial abuse at the campers. The young
men then went back to one of their homes to get a gun. They returned and fired
blanks at the campers. One man responded by throwing a beer bottle at their
car. They chased that man down, repeatedly kicked him in the head, and smashed
a bottle on his head. When he went limp, they casually drove away. The man
died.
As there were witnesses, the young men
were caught and sentenced. The judge decided that this was “toward the lower
end of the scale of seriousness for crimes of manslaughter”. He praised the
“good character” of every one of the young men. For example, one of them,
admittedly having a prior assault conviction, had been a “good sportsman” in
school.
The judge in question was Brian Martin.
Martin resigned from the royal commission within a week of appointment,
conceding that he “would not have the full confidence of sections” of the
Aboriginal community. The Attorney-General had previously dismissed those
critics as “very foolish”. Within a few hours of the resignation, the federal
government appointed one of the three people they had originally consulted, and
a former Queensland Supreme Court Justice.
The
racism
International readers may wonder why it
took so long for public outrage in the face of facts that were so publicly
accessible for so long. The answer is that many of the victims discussed above
are Aboriginal. About 96 percent of the children in juvenile detention in the
NT are Aboriginal, though Aboriginal people only constitute about 30 percent of
people in the NT.
In 1991, the Royal Commission into
Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC) released its landmark report, showing
that the reason so many Aboriginal people die in custody is because they are so
disproportionately
likely to be in custody. 25 years later, that disproportionate rate has grown.
Where they were eight times more likely to be in custody in 1991, they are now
15 times more likely to be in prison. The 339 recommendations of RCIADIC have
overwhelmingly been ignored.
Many Aboriginal people have responded with
scepticism to the new royal commission. This scepticism is richly justified. As
noted above, governments have not only ignored the RCIADIC, they also ignored
many other reports into juvenile detention of Aboriginal children. They have
also ignored countless other reports in Aboriginal affairs. Part of this is
because the reports would require money to be invested in Aboriginal
communities, and they don’t care about Aboriginal people. Part of this is
because expert opinion more or less always calls for a policy of
self-determination, which was a central recommendation of RCIADIC. Instead,
governments prefer to centralise power in their own hands, and marginalise
Aboriginal communities from decision-making. This marginalisation was
illustrated once again in the royal commission process. Countless other
examples could be given.
In 1991, RCIADIC argued that the reasons
so many Aboriginal people were in custody could be divided into two factors.
One was discriminatory elements in the criminal justice system. Another was the
entrenched disadvantage of Aboriginal communities. Neither have been addressed.
Neither will be addressed by the new royal commission. Over two decades of
reports show that the problem is not a lack of knowledge. It’s that governments
refuse to act on what we do know. The new royal commission is unlikely to
resolve this problem.