Last week I produced a video for Guardian Australia on expanded Victoria police search powers in the Melbourne CBD. Days later, I experienced that power first-hand.
I was covering Sunday’s Put Australia First Rally in Melbourne. The area had just become a “designated area” for six months mere hours earlier. The protest had just begun. Stephanie Convery, my colleague, had stepped away, and so I was alone and away from protesters, standing just inside Flinders Street station with my video gear.
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Then two officers, both women, approached. They asked me if I knew that they were allowed to search me without a warrant. “Oh yes, I certainly do,” I said. As our reporting covered, the “designated area” means police and protective service officers (PSOs) can randomly stop and search or pat down anyone without a warrant or reasonable grounds, something that human rights and legal groups have described as a “vast overreach”.
They appeared to sense my guardedness. One of the officers explained the new powers to me, like she was reciting a script, continuing even after I interjected a few times to say that I knew what was going on.
I asked one of the officers to hold the large video camera and monopod I was carrying, and I lifted my arms. The other officer waved a metal detector from my armpits to my thighs. We discussed the lip balm, batteries and lens cap in my pocket.
Police reported that about 700 people attended the Put Australia First rally, but it was still very early. There were only about 200 protesters there and easily as many officers.
A big patch of rain had just come through. Soaked officers formed a boundary around the mostly empty intersection in front of Flinders Street station. The protesters huddled together under the cover outside the station, wearing soggy Australian flags, including one with a boxing Kangaroo. “Are you with them?” asked the officer. I told her I was there as media.
My arms were still outstretched when Steph returned, approaching us as the officer was telling me to “be careful”, referring to the protesters.
As I began rummaging through my bag, unzipping my microphone case and showing the officers a microphone and camera battery, Steph pulled her media pass out of her wallet and told them we worked for Guardian Australia. The search ended very quickly after that.
I offered to show the officers the rest of my bags’ contents, but they weren’t interested. They handed us a print-out explaining the powers and then walked away. The same officer repeated her warnings. “Be careful in there,” she said.
I am a journalist, and so I have a lot of experience dealing with strangers in ambiguous positions of power. I am also a white woman. I can see how a random street search could quickly turn hostile. And, even if it didn’t, I can see how it could be confronting for some people. For me, it was mainly just awkward.
I know the calculation someone makes when their boss asks them to go out and approach strangers. I am often sent out to get vox pops, and I have worked in direct sales.
At the protest, rock music with offensive lyrics was blaring from a large portable speaker, a white boxer was barking loudly in the tight crowd, and I spotted what appeared to be a known neo-Nazi on the edge of the dense crowd.
I was wearing a Busselton Jetty cap and a purple Kuromi lanyard – nothing that would indicate that I was part of the protest. It made me wonder exactly what direction they had been given that day in terms of who they should pat down or search.
On Sunday, the police found a single knuckle duster through the warrantless searches. They did not clarify how many searches they did to find it.
Lisa Favazzo is a multimedia journalist for Guardian Australia
