" Culture of 'cover-up' hid evidence " Minister blind to shocking footage " PM calls royal commission " Boy thanks nation for support
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has announced a royal commission into brutality and its cover-up in the Northern Territory's juvenile detention facilities, as the federal minister responsible revealed he thought the problem was fixed and had not seen security camera footage of abuse of boys by staff.
Mr Turnbull said the royal commission would be restricted to acts of abuse at Darwin's Don Dale Detention Centre in the interests of speed, dashing calls by the opposition and some of his own ministers that the inquiry be expanded to the the Northern Territory's juvenile detention system as a whole. 
As the nation expressed outrage at the systemic abuse of children aired in the ABC's Four Corners program on Monday, Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion revealed he did not intervene because he had not seen any CCTV vision and the issue had not "piqued" his interest.
The Territory-based Turnbull cabinet minister also admitted he had not watched the Four Corners program about the deliberate violence against mainly Indigenous children because he was dining with the family of a staff member that night.
Inmates at Alice Springs Correctional Centre staged a protest in response to the footage. A spokesman for the Northern Territory Department of Corrections confirmed eight prisoners had been on the roof since 3.45pm on Tuesday.
A Fairfax Media photographer said the prison, which is about 30 kilometres from Alice, had been locked down and media barred from approaching the facility.
During the day Mr Turnbull had overruled calls by Senator Scullion and Treasurer Scott Morrison for broader terms of reference on the inquiry.
"You've got to deal with what is clearly a broader systemic issue," Mr Morrison had told 2GB.
The graphic pictures showed children being slammed into beds, stripped naked, tear-gassed, hooded and handcuffed, put in extended solitary confinement, and manacled to purpose-built restraint chairs.
Senator Scullion admitted the first he heard about the footage was when a clearly agitated Mr Turnbull rang him on Monday night after Four Corners, looking for advice.
However, Mr Scullion had not watched the broadcast, despite his office having obtained an early copy.
Four Corners reporter Caro Meldrum-Hanna was aghast, using Twitter to say: "Scullion's office asked me for an advanced copy of the #4Corners program yesterday. He went out to dinner last night instead of watching?"
Northern Territory Chief Minister Adam Giles told reporters he knew nothing of the abuse because a culture of cover-up in the department had ensured it had never made it to senior levels of government. With his government rocked to its foundations and facing an election in   August, he stripped Corrective Services Minister John Elferink of that portfolio.
Under intense pressure on Tuesday, Senator Scullion used a press conference to declare he had not known nor asked about systemic abuse in his home jurisdiction's youth detention system - in which some 97 per cent of inmates are Indigenous boys - despite previous reports, and widespread complaints from lawyers and others close to the system.
"Yes, this is my patch ... I made assumptions - you've got to be careful about assumptions - I assumed that the Northern Territory government were taking care of this matter and that I didn't take any further action in that," a contrite Senator Scullion admitted.
In further comments, however, he said it was his opinion that Mr Elferink should be dumped altogether rather than merely losing his correctional services responsibilities while retaining others such as Attorney-General in the Northern Territory.
Describing the revelations in the now-closed original Don Dale facility as "unthinkably evil", he said prison officers should face criminal charges.
Mr Turnbull moved quickly to initiate the royal commission after making a series of urgent telephone calls on Monday night to Mr Giles, and to his own ministers, Senator Scullion and Attorney-General George Brandis.
The cabinet will meet on Thursday in Canberra to finalise the terms of reference and to decide on a suitably "eminent" royal commissioner.
Mr Turnbull advised the inquiry would be done in partnership with the NT government; would be done quickly with a report date in the first half of 2017; and that its purview would be limited to the Don Dale Centre itself, in order to achieve quick results.
"Previous inquiries conducted within the Northern Territory into the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre failed to identify the nature and extent of the behaviour highlighted by Four Corners," he said in a statement with Senator Brandis. "This needs to be a thorough inquiry."