Australia Prime Minister calls for royal commission for assault in juvenile detention

Australia's prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has called a royal commission after a report showed prison guards assaulting teenage boys in juvenile detention

The report raised questions about an institutionalised culture of abuse at Northern Territory corrections centres.

The Four Corners program showed footage of teenage offenders stripped naked, assaulted and tear gassed.

One of the boys was hooded and cuffed to a mechanical restraint chair wearing a "spit hood".

Turnbull said the treatment of youths needed a thorough enquiry.

"Like all Australians, I have been deeply shocked, shocked and appalled, by the images of mistreatment at the Don Dale centre," Turnbull said.

"We will be establishing a royal commission into these events, into this centre; we intend to do so jointly with the Northern Territory government.

"We will get to the bottom of what happened here ... we want to know why there were inquiries into this centre which did not turn up the evidence and the information that we saw on Four Corners last night."

Barrister John Lawrence compared the treatment of the children to Guantanamo Bay.

"We're talking about kids that are being shackled with handcuffs on their ankles, their wrists, their waist areas. They're being shackled to chairs," he said. "This is actually happening in Australia in 2016."

The president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, praised the decision to investigate mistreatment at the juvenile detention centres.

"I think for the prime minister to respond so quickly with the idea of a royal commission, and possibly an interim report, is exactly what we need," Triggs said.

"If one of us were to have been found to have treated our children in this way we would probably