From the Canberra Times

Torture protocol to open our doors
BY LOUIS ANDREWS
23/05/2009 10:01:00 AM

The Australian Government will seek to shine a light into prisons, detention centres, psychiatric wards and secure aged-care facilities after signing up to international inspections.
Attorney-General Robert McClelland announced yesterday the Government had signed an optional United Nations protocol mandating international inspections of places of detention.

The Government will also introduce legislation making torture a Commonwealth offence.

Human Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes said the decision to open up places of detention to UN inspections was a necessary one.

He said transparency at facilities was good, rather than perfect, and the Government's obligations under the protocol would crack open the closed doors of prisons, detention centres and more importantly psychiatric wards and secure aged-care facilities.

''Both of those last two are areas where I think there has been a need for independent assessment,'' Mr Innes said.

Mr McClelland said in a speech to the Lowy Institute for International Policy there was more that could be done now to harden Australia's stance on torture.

''Nothing justifies torture, and nothing justifies a state's use of it,'' the Attorney-General said.

A federal torture offence would work concurrently with the laws in other jurisdictions.