The Victorian government is seeking to give police broader powers to search people without a warrant if they are suspected of carrying knives in public.

Reminder that police can just sort of declare an area “designated” and can then search anybody who goes into those areas, including their bags and vehicles. They do not need permission or reasonable grounds to do this. They also have powers to strip search anyone in these areas if they don’t (or say they don’t) have another way to search you, like a metal detector.

If the designated area is “planned”, they are required to publish this in a paper and in the government gazette and they also have to leave a gap of 10 days between the end of one designated area and the start of another. But if the area is declared and is unplanned, they do not need to notify anyone and can start one even if it has not been 10 days since the last one. They also can only declare certain areas as designated, although in practice this means they can (and do!) declare areas as large as the entire CBD as designated. They also can’t declare an area for longer than 12 hours.

The key change in this is that they want the power to declare certain areas as permanent designated areas