Legislation rushed through parliament last week will, for the first time, allow officials to search for drugs and confiscate phones in immigration detention centres.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said legislation passed last week would end a"ridiculous situation" where Border Force officials were not allowed to search for drugs or confiscate phones of criminals housed in immigration detention.Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said the issues in immigration detention had changed drastically over the past 20 years, and the laws needed to adjust to reflect that.
“So we do have challenges where people who are members of outlaw motorcycle gangs, where people who have connections to organised crime have been wanting to run operations through detention centres. We can't run a system that way.” “Up until this point, we've been able to search for weapons and we've been able to search for certain items. We haven't been able to search for drugs, and that was a ridiculous situation,” he said.
“Now the issue of phones, there are times where to get behind an operation someone's running, you want to be able to look at their phone,” he said In October Australian Border Force Commissioner Michael Outram said the prevalence of alcohol and drugs in immigration detention had reduced the safety of both staff and detainees in detention centres.
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