Coalition accused of sitting on warnings that immigration detention may have breached duty of care

The Australian government also has been accused of not doing enough to cut the time spent in detention centres like this one at Sydney’s Villawood. Photograph: Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty Images

The immigration minister, Andrew Giles, has accused the Morrison government of having “sat” on an explosive review of immigration detention and doing “very limited work” on alternatives, despite the review’s conclusion that detention was “failing”.

But advocates have responded to the report by the former secretary of the attorney general’s department Robert Cornall by accusing Labor of not having done enough to cut the time spent in detention.