The Federal Government is trying to bolster the powers of Australian Border Force officers by allowing them to seize drugs and mobile phones belonging to people in immigration detention, reheating legislation which failed to pass Parliament before the last election.Similar legislation introduced in 2017 but not debated before 2019 electionThe laws were first introduced to the House of Representatives in September 2017, but languished in the Senate for almost 18 months without being debated.
"[You're] utilising their resources and it can sometimes take time and in the meantime a detainee may have consumed the drugs or got rid of it and so the evidence has gone," Mr Tudge told the ABC. "We've had other instances where a person is in a detention centre because of their extreme ideological views....they're using their device to spread those ideological views."
"[It will mean] the Australian Border Force officers will have the discretion to be able to remove mobile phones from individuals... and they'll exercise that discretion judiciously," he said. Labor raised a series of shortcomings with the proposal during the last Parliament, including demanding extra safeguards be put into the legislation to ensure people were not improperly strip-searched.
"If Peter Dutton's incompetence means illicit drugs, weapons and child exploitation material have made their way into immigration detention centres, he needs to explain why this has happened during his five and a half years as the Minister," she said.
Must have. Only the abc, labor and greens don't want it while the majority of Australian want it NOW.
If Australia's Border Force turn out anything like their counterparts in the USA then they will be just a bunch of uneducated thugs always exceeding their mandate
Cool
like boarder farce needs further powers...useless with current brief...
What's wrong with getting local or Federal police to do this? That's their job. Border Force aren't an alternative Police Force No policing training What's more, they are Totally incompetent at their job of keeping out covid-19. Don't give the incompetents more power.