Liberty Victoria calls out Victoria Police’s declaration of the Melbourne CBD as a ‘designated area’ under the Control of Weapons Act 1990 (Vic) for the next six months as an abuse of police powers, and a fundamental erosion of human rights.
What powers will police be given?
Police will be given wide-ranging powers, including the power to search people without warrants or reasonable suspicion, and the power to give move-on orders in some circumstances.
The power to conduct these ‘no reason’ searches constitutes a significant encroachment on our privacy and civil liberties.
When the powers were first introduced in 2009, the Government accepted that they were inconsistent with human rights as protected by the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities, which means that the powers cannot be “demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society based on human dignity, equality and freedom”.
However – even at that stage – it was never anticipated that these search zones would be designated for months on end, or extend to the entire CBD of Melbourne.
What is the issue with the powers?
The use of the ‘designated area’ powers will allow police to circumvent the usual legal safeguards against unwarranted police intrusion. Normally, police require reasonable grounds to suspect that a person is carrying something illegal or prohibited before they can be searched.
We also know that the powers will disproportionately be used against First Nations people and other people of colour.
We know there are real issues with racial profiling when it comes to searching people.
Further, searches without reasonable suspicion lead to stigmatic shaming. People should be able to be free to live their lives without being searched by police for no reason.
Data from the Racial Profiling Data Monitoring Project shows that Aboriginal people were 15x more likely to be searched by Victoria Police, and that they are consistently less likely to find an item when they search a person perceived to be a POC compared with a person they perceived to be white.
Is there a justification for these powers being used?
These very significant limitations on people’s human rights are not justified, much less in such a large area for such a long time.
Importantly, Liberty Victoria’s Rights Advocacy Project recently reported that the FOI data for the use of these powers from January 2021 to January 2023 showed that of almost 24,000 ‘designated areas’ searches during that time, only 252 searches resulted in ‘objects or substances’ being found. This equates to a hit rate of just over 1%.
We call on the Chief Commissioner of Police to abandon plans to declare the entire CBD a designated area. This is a grossly disproportionate use of exceptional powers and it weakens the basic norms that unite us as citizens and residents of Melbourne,
We also continue our calls for the repeal of designated search areas powers entirely.