The Northern Territory attorney general, John Elferink, should be applauded for how he ran the corrections portfolio, the chief minister has said just one day after sacking him following the ABC Four Corners report into the abuses and mistreatment of juvenile detainees.

The praise comes amid calls for Elferink to be sacked from his other portfolios, despite his scheduled retirement at the NT election next month.

Groups have also demanded the royal commission be negotiated, established and run completely independently of the Northern Territory government, which many expect will be heavily investigated itself.



Elferink has not made any public appearances since the Four Corners program aired shocking footage of instances of guards abusing or mistreating juvenile detainees inside Darwin’s Don Dale youth correctional facility. His office continues to refuse all media requests.

In the small unicameral parliament of the NT government, Elferink is a particularly powerful minister. Until Tuesday he was the attorney general and minister for justice, the minister for corrections, the minister for women and children, the minister for health, for mental health services and for disability services.

After the announcement of a royal commission into juvenile detention, the chief minister, Adam Giles, assumed Elferink’s portfolios for justice and corrections but the minister kept everything else.

Giles on Wednesday praised Elferink’s work to date, telling local radio he should be applauded for his “amazing” efforts to turn around the justice system.

Over several years Elferink had consistently maintained a defensive response to damning inquiries and revelations of repeated escapes, disturbances and alleged abuses, referring to the children at the centre of many incidents as a “hard core group of thugs” who were “grown men essentially”.

In response to the Four Corners report, the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, announced a royal commission, and Giles expressed the support and willingness of the NT government to assist.

But critics are now expressing horror that Elferink, as attorney general, will be assisting negotiations on the royal commission’s terms of reference.

He is due to retire at the coming NT election but the federal and NT government have both expressed plans to begin the inquiry set up as soon as possible.

The former NT attorney general Delia Lawrie said the royal commission would in all likelihood be examining Elferink. Lawrie said Giles allowed Elferink to “preside over a system of brutality”, however she also professed as much ignorance about the incidents as her successors.

Mick Gooda, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner, expressed disbelief on Tuesday that Elferink retained the role of attorney general.

“[Elferink] sacked Prisons Minister but still the AG, are they seriously telling us he will be negotiating the ToRs for the Royal Commission?” he wrote on Twitter.

The Darwin barrister John Lawrence said the royal commission had to be completely independent of not just Elferink but the entire Northern Territory government.



“It’s still being described as a joint inquiry but that can’t happen,” he told Guardian Australia. “The inquiry is inquiring into the Northern Territory government and the department of corrections.

“We’ve already had the commissioner’s report, the report the Northern Territory government commissioned interstate from Michael Vita. It enabled them to deal with it in the media and then shelve them.”

The peak body representing Indigenous land councils, medical and legal organisations in the Northern Territory went so far as to demand the dismissal of the Northern Territory government.

The group have written to Turnbull and also asked him to keep the territory government “at arm’s length”.

Alex Tighe, a member of the legal team acting for 17-year-old detainee Dylan Vollar, addressed the claims made by Giles that there was a cover-up of the abuse and he had no knowledge of it.



“He’s saying there’s a culture of cover-up but he’s the guy at the top, he is the government,” Tighe said.

“The royal commission terms of reference need to be as expansive as possible. The Northern Territory government up to its highest level needs to be scrutinised by the royal commission and it needs to be conducted independently of the Northern Territory government and run entirely by the federal government.”