Unrestricted access: Australia to allow UN inspection of prisons and detention centres to stamp out torture

Independent inspections at youth prisons or immigration detention centres will be permitted after the Turnbull government pledged to ratify a United Nations treaty in a bid to stamp out torture.

The decision comes just two years after then prime minister Tony Abbott complained “Australians are sick of being lectured to by the United Nations” when the government was found in breach of an anti-torture convention.

The treaty - which Attorney-General George Brandis said should be ratified by December - will allow “unrestricted access” for international UN inspectors to enter any prison or place in Australia “where people are deprived of their liberty”.

The move quickly kicked off legal debate over whether this will extend to Australia’s offshore detention camps in the Pacific.

The treaty also calls for local inspectors in Australia to be granted powers for sweeping independent assessments of prisons, police cells and immigration facilities.

The treaty was actually signed in 2009 - “that was three prime ministers ago,” Senator Brandis told a human rights forum in Canberra on Thursday - but has languished in the years since without being implemented.

The decision to ratify comes at a sensitive time after revelations of abuse last year at the Don Dale youth detention centre in Darwin led to the establishment of a royal commission.

It also follows recent strife in Victoria’s juvenile prisons and persistent reports of cruel treatment of people held in offshore immigration detention camps.

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