The Northern Territory Country Liberal Party (CLP) government has prevented United Nations human rights experts from accessing prisons, youth detention centres and police watch houses. This is despite federal Labor giving assurances that all states and territories would cooperate with inspectors from the United Nations Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT).
Change the Record, the First Nations-led coalition of legal, health and family violence prevention experts, condemned the CLP for refusing to allow the UN OPCAT inspectors in.
“Australia is violating human rights — and now states and territories are shutting the UN out to avoid accountability,” Jade Lane, spokesperson for Change the Record, said on December 9.
There is an “escalating, nationwide pattern of human rights violations that disproportionately target Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and people”, Lane said, pointing to the recently-released damning NT Ombudsman Watch House Investigation Report.
It is the third time in two years that Australia has refused a UN human rights body entry to government-run facilities.
“The federal government invited this UN delegation. Three days after I met with the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention at a civil society roundtable, the NT slammed the door in their face. This is a direct undermining of the Commonwealth’s own human rights commitments,” Lane said.
David Shoebridge, Greens foreign affairs spokesperson, said Labor had promised, in November 2022, that all jurisdictions would ensure access.
“Three years later, those promises ring hollow,” he said. “As recently as November 2025, the Commonwealth assured us they were working with states and territories and engaging in ‘constructive dialogue’; with the UN. Whatever the Federal Labor government has done has not worked, and the inspectors have again been denied entry.” He said it was a failure of national leadership.
“The NT Ombudsman’s recent report exposed appalling conditions in the territory’s detention facilities that would clearly raise the interest of the UN torture inspectors.”
Lane said the NT’s decision to refuse entry to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention was connected to the NT having the second-highest incarceration rate in the world — behind El Salvador.
Kat McNamara, Greens Member of the Legislative Assembly for Nightcliff, said the CLP’s efforts to hide human rights abuses in NT prisons “cannot be accepted” and called for Labor to intervene.
“The only reason you would deny access to a UN body investigating torture and other inhumane treatment in your facilities is because you know that these human rights abuses are occurring.”
Lane said the Ombudsman report exposed severe overcrowding, unhygienic conditions and relentless 24/7 lighting in police watch houses — conditions it described as “unreasonable and oppressive”.
Shoebridge said as the Commonwealth funds 80% of the Northern Territory government budget, it is in a powerful position. “If they're funding it, they should demand to open it. If they won’t they should cut off funding to these torture factories. You can't bankroll a system and then claim you have no power to demand accountability.”
In addition, Change the Record has heard that children are being transferred from Alice Springs to Darwin — a distance of 1500 kilometres — without consent.
Lane said this highlights a “disturbing pattern of disregard for the rights and wellbeing of children in custody”.
Change the Record is calling for urgent action from federal Labor, led by First Nations communities, that includes:
1. Legislated enforceable national minimum standards for youth justice and for the treatment of children in detention that are consistent with Australia’s human rights obligations and developed in partnership with First Nations people.
2. Conditions for federal funding to ensunre that states and territories act in line with Australia’s human rights obligations under international law, legislated national minimum standards, and commitments under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, as well as sanctions when these conditions are violated.
3. Establishing transformative criminal legal system reform as a national policy priority, including a plan to fully implement the recommendations from the 1997 Bringing Them Home report, the 1987 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody; and the 2025 Help way earlier! report.
4. A national public education campaign rejecting punitive approaches as well as providing evidence on what works to address the root causes of crime and the many successful alternatives to incarceration.
“Australia cannot continue to turn a blind eye while states and territories abuse the human rights of children,” Lane said.
“They invited the UN to Australia — now they must ensure human rights experts can do their job. Anything less is a failure of national leadership.”