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.
