The royal commission into the protection and detention of children in the Northern Territory has told government lawyers to find out the source of a leak of evidence to the media.
The Northern Territory government will also investigate the leak and has refused to guarantee the journalist’s phone records will not be accessed.
Late on Thursday Sky News published a letter, reportedly written by former juvenile detainee Dylan Voller, which listed a number of guards and other inmates under a heading “people to kill” and various ways in which he could kill them.
According to the report, Voller wrote the list while he was detained at Don Dale juvenile corrections facility, but it does not say when. Voller has been in and out of detention since the age of 11.
The list is among thousands of pieces of evidence given to the commission.
At a directions hearing on Friday morning commissioner Margaret White, sitting alongside co-commissioner Mick Gooda, demanded answers from lawyers about the source of the leak.
“Commissioner Gooda and I are disturbed about the leak and we would like to get to the bottom of who has provided the news agencies with the documents,” White said. “It appears to be in breach of all the undertakings that have been given by the parties with respect to documents.”
White said the document would have been in the possession of the NT government, which was the “conduit through whom all those documents come to the commission”.
Sonia Brownhill SC, the Northern Territory government solicitor general, said she didn’t know anything about the document other than what had been reported. While the document may have originated with the NT government, it had also since been provided to the commission, she said.
“I’m not making anything of that other than we’re not the only ones who hold the document,” she said.
Brownhill agreed to inquire with the NT Department of Corrections at the direction of the commissioners.
Counsel assisting the commission, Peter Callaghan SC, observed that the list pictured in the media reports did not appear in the same form that it was given to the commission.
On Friday afternoon the NT attorney general, Natasha Fyles, said there would be an investigation into the leak, and refused to guarantee that the Sky News journalist’s phone records would not be accessed.
It is the second leak of documents related to the department of corrections, after a full unredacted copy of the critical Hamburger report was leaked last year. No investigation was launched at the time.
“I think we need to respect in the Northern Territory that we have hard-working journalists and they in their roles have processes, and we need to, as a government respect that,” Fyles said.
“This is not about a witch hunt, this is just making sure that in relation to the commissioner’s comment, that we look into the matter.”
When asked if she could guarantee phone records would not be accessed, Fyles said: “On the surface I can say no.
“Obviously police may have different feelings on that, but I’m not saying it’s at that level yet,” she said.
In 2010 a Darwin journalist lodged a complaint with the NT ombudsman over police accessing his records to find the source of a story about a raid on the house of the then lord mayor.
Peter O’Brien, who represents Voller, told Guardian Australia if the leak came from the corrections department or employees it constituted a continuation of the mistreatment of juvenile detainees, “using the brutality of lawyers, and using the brutality of the press”.
He said the report, which he was not aware of until publication, was “contemptuous” and believed the journalist should be questioned and reveal his source.
O’Brien said he also supported the potential accessing of the journalist’s phone records.
Voller had been identified as a vulnerable witness, O’Brien said, and the leak came at a time when his rehabilitation was fragile and while he had been “doing his best to get on with life in a meaningful way”.
O’Brien said during Friday’s hearing his client was “extremely disturbed” by the leak.
“It has tremendous potential obviously, to not only prejudice him and besmirch his character in these proceedings, but also jeopardises his chances of rehabilitation.”
Voller, who has been serving a three year and eight month sentence on convictions related to an aggravated robbery, was last month released on bail to the Alice Springs rehabilitation camp Bush Mob.
Friday’s hearing comes as the royal commission prepares to hold its fourth set of public hearing next week in Alice Springs.
The NT government is expected to provide responses to testimony delivered by Voller in a December public hearing, and by another juvenile witness in a closed session.
The commission will hear evidence from a number of other vulnerable witnesses, as well as former and current corrections and youth justice staff.
Derek Tasker, the guard who was found not guilty of assault over his treatment of Voller, is among the witnesses scheduled to appear, as is the current NT minister Gerry McCarthy.
McCarthy was the corrections minister in the former Labor government when a number of the alleged incidents of mistreatment of juvenile detainees occurred, but has previously said he had not seen the footage which aired on the ABC.
He also oversaw the controversial commissioning and construction of the $1.8bn adult prison.
