Queensland’s Inspector Finds Wacol Unfit for Children, Then Drops Its Call to Close It

The Inspector sent his consultation draft to the Government on 1 June 2026. It asked that Wacol cease to operate as a youth detention centre once Woodford opens. On 27 August 2026 the Government introduced its bail Bill. Its own Statement of Compatibility under the Human Rights Act 2019 anticipates that the Bill will increase the number of children and adults held on remand in youth detention centres and police watch-houses, and that it may engage the right to protection from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

The Inspector drew the consequence:

He therefore withdrew the closure recommendation. “While we do not consider the centre to be a suitable facility for the detention of children,” the report concludes, “we consider it to be more suitable than detention in police watch-houses.”

The department’s own figures show what Wacol replaced. In July 2024, children spent an average of 12.5 days in police watch-houses; in July 2025, after Wacol opened, the average fell to 2.4 days. The longest watch-house stay fell from 27 days to 7. A Bill that fills every bed would send children back to the cells those figures describe.

The Inspector has begun a second inspection of Wacol and will report in 2027, when the Bill’s effect on detention numbers will be clearer.

My bail Bill evidence brief sets out what the Government’s own papers concede about the Bill.

On an average day in 2024–25, 192 of the young people aged 10 to 17 in Queensland detention were First Nations: 71 per cent, at 27 times the rate of non-Indigenous young people. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports both figures.

At Wacol, First Nations children made up between 40 and 80 per cent of the children held from April to October 2025. Nearly every child sent from north of Rockhampton is Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, hundreds of kilometres from family and Country. By the time of the inspection, the local Elder group had visited once, for a NAIDOC event, and no Elder group from the north had visited.

Any law that fills detention beds will fall hardest on these children. The Inspector’s capacity warning remains a forecast, and no government modelling yet counts its effect by First Nations status. The detention figures already published leave little doubt about whom it will reach first.

The department accepted seven of the Inspector’s 13 recommendations and accepted the other six in principle. It accepted in principle the call to keep children at Wacol “for as short a time as possible.” It also accepted in principle the call for a senior executive director to approve every transfer back to Wacol, while pointing to a new framework that escalates a decision to that officer only when centre heads disagree or a child has spent more than 14 days under it.

On the building itself, the department wrote that Wacol “operates within a QPS-owned facility” and that “large-scale or structural upgrades are not feasible.” It offered murals, soft furnishings, a classroom, and plans for children to paint blackboard panels in their pods.