The Legislative Assembly on Thursday passed a bill to ensure the ACT can meet the standards of the UN's optional protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT), after the federal government ratified the rules in December.

The new laws will mean UN inspectors will now be able, should they wish, to inspect any ACT "places of detention" including the Alexander Maconochie Centre, Bimberi youth justice centre, court and police cells.

It also sets up the territory's new Inspector of Corrections to act as a local independent monitoring body, making regular visits to such places of detention in the ACT to help ensure detainees are free from torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

But Opposition justice spokeswoman Giulia Jones told the Assembly that if there was "anybody who sits above us, it's the federal parliament, and I think we would even resist that to a large extent".

She said while many of the aspirations of the UN subcommittee "may be very good" and the ACT could learn from it, the Opposition "don't believe it's appropriate to make ourselves permanently available to that international body".

Justice minister Shane Rattenbury said Mrs Jones' comments were "the most extraordinary response" from the Opposition to reject an international treaty that the federal Liberal government has ratified, "because somehow we are more grown up than anybody else".

"This is a globally-recognised treaty that has been signed up to by dozens of countries [but] Mrs Jones thinks the ACT is above it," he said.

"That's what's just happened, we've been told we don't need to allow the UN to make these inspections if they come and it's certainly not what I expected today."