Mick Gooda has used his opening address to the royal commission into the protection and detention of children to dismiss a reported challenge to his appointment by the former Northern Territory attorney general John Elferink.
It was standing room only at Darwin supreme court on Tuesday when Gooda and his co-commissioner, Margaret White, held the first hearing of the inquiry launched after the Four Corners broadcast of mistreatment inside NT juvenile detention. The commissioners pledged engagement with the Indigenous community.
In his opening address Gooda immediately rejected reports that Elferink would challenge his appointment because of an allegedly biased tweet sent out after the Four Corners broadcast, which read: “The federal government has to intervene and sack the NT government.”
“There has been some speculation that I will not bring an impartial mind to some aspects of the terms of reference,” Gooda said on Tuesday.
“I wish to assure those people and the community that I will look only at the evidence and other information given to the commission and that nothing extraneous will affect the conclusions I reach with my co-commissioner.”
Elferink was also the NT minister for justice, children and families, and corrections and is expected to be called before the commission about his four years as a minister.
The commission is expected to hold hearings from mid-October to December, before delivering a final report in March. It will examine the legislation and framework surrounding child protection and youth detention in the Northern Territory, with particular focus on the management of youth detention facilities such as Darwin’s Don Dale, which was the site of a number of disturbances, escapes and alleged mistreatment of detainees.
Tuesday’s directions hearing heard from Gooda and White, as well as commission officials and the senior counsels assisting, Peter Callaghan SC and Tony McAvoy SC.
“One of the key measures of the moral prosperity of any society is the manner in which it treats its most vulnerable,” McAvoy told the commission.
McAvoy said government agencies and other individuals and bodies had already been issued with notices to produce evidence, while Callaghan noted that at least a dozen previous reports had identified failings in the system which would be examined by the commission.
The commission “must go towards changing the way that we in the community and the people we elect into parliament treat all our children when they come into contact with the juvenile justice system”, said the Larrakia traditional owner Nigel Brown in his welcome to country and opening speech.
In the NT about 97% of juvenile detainees are Indigenous. Gooda pledged the commission would act with “a high degree of cultural competence” and said it had engaged two senior Aboriginal people to ensure the community was aware of the commission’s work and felt secure talking to it.
Gooda referred to longstanding dissatisfaction with the number of royal commissions which had delivered recommendations only for governments to ignore them.
“The success of the commission is likely to be judged by the Australian community by the recommendations made and the readiness of governments to implement them,” he said. “Consequently, we want to work with all affected parties to craft the best implementable recommendations possible.”
Gooda and White have held discussions at a joint land council meeting in Kalkarindji, as well as with youth justice groups, police, unions and various government departments.
“In my many discussions with all sections of the Australian community since my appointment, there is a general consensus that we don’t need more research to ‘describe the issues’,” he said, listing previous inquiries into child protection systems, the stolen generations, Aboriginal deaths in custody and child sexual abuse.
“Despite being a painful process, for a community to move forward it must come to understand where these wrongs have occurred and ensure these wrongs are not repeated,” he said.
“This royal commission must develop meaningful recommendations which, when implemented through legislation and changes in institutional culture and management, will ensure a better future for all in the Northern Territory.”
White called for those who felt they could offer relevant “evidence-based observations or experiences” to contact the commission.
She said the commission would protect those summonsed to appear and would not hesitate to refer to authorities anyone who would “impede its work”.
A Darwin lawyer, John Lawrence SC, said the first hearing was “encouraging and suggested strongly there was going to be a comprehensive, thorough and rigorous investigation into the 10-year period of history which would include not just the detention facilities but also youth protection and the dangers of children falling of the rails, which would presumably including education structures and safeguards”.
He told Guardian Australia outside the hearing that previous inaction on royal commission recommendations was always a concern “but you can only go one step at a time”.
“One can only learn from the past and hopefully the material from these previous commissions will be taken on board and recommendations couched accordingly.”
Lawrence will appear at the commission on behalf of one of the boys at the centre of the Don Dale allegations, Jake Roper, as well as the Aboriginal Peak Organisations NT. He said Roper welcomed the inquiry and was willing to cooperate with the royal commission “in all ways”.
Peter O’Brien, representing Dylan Voller, the now 18-year-old who was placed in a spit hood and tied to a restraint chair, and another boy, said he had absolute confidence in the commissioners’ ability.
“What happened to them was deplorable, and it appears to me from those very positive comments made today by the commissioner and counsel assisting that those matters are already solid findings,” he said.
“We need to make sure it doesn’t happen to other children, so that Jake Roper’s little siblings, and Dylan Voller’s brothers and sisters, and other generations of children, that it doesn’t happen to them.”
On Monday human rights and legal groups called for immediate action to prevent the mistreatment of children in detention while the commission ran.
The Human Rights Law Centre, Amnesty International and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service said the NT government had to immediately end the practice of solitary confinement, introduce an independent inspector and meaningfully engage with the Indigenous community.
“We shouldn’t need to wait for the royal commission’s findings to ensure children are safe,” said the centre’s director of legal advocacy, Ruth Barson.
“Independent inspections and oversight of detention facilities are proven to work to prevent the type of appalling treatment we recently saw in the Don Dale youth detention facility.”
