Police will not need to have reasonable suspicion a car is being used to traffick drugs to stop and search it on roads designated as “drug transit routes” under new powers proposed by the Northern Territory government.
The legislation, announced by the chief minister, Adam Giles, and the attorney general, John Elferink, on Monday will form part of the government’s response to the spread of methamphetamine, after the establishment of a parliamentary inquiry and a joint government taskforce.
The proposed powers would allow NT police to declare certain roads, such as the Barkley and Stuart highways, as drug transit routes for up to 14 days. The declaration gives police the power to stop and search – including with police sniffer dogs – any vehicle in that area, without a warrant and without requiring reasonable suspicion of illegal activity.
Giles said the powers would give police “greater flexibility” in searching cars on arterial roads, particularly those coming into the territory.
Up to 80% of crystal methamphetamine – commonly known as ice – is estimated to be from interstate, Giles told the media.
“We want to be able to provide police with increased levels of powers to stop and search vehicles so they can seek to identify the sources of the supply of drugs, particularly ice, coming into the Northern Territory,” he said on Monday.
Elferink said the legislation would expand already enhanced police powers of search and seizure for alcohol and kava destined for Indigenous communities.
The proposed laws are modelled on South Australian legislation which has been operating since 2008. Under the SA law, a senior police officer can declare an area a drug transit route, as long as it is more than 30km from the Adelaide general post office, and no larger than five square kilometres. Up to three designated routes can be in operation at one time.
Guardian Australia understands the NT legislation will have restrictions on the length and area of the designated routes, but the limits have not yet been decided. It’s not yet known if there will be limits on the number of designated routes in operation at any one time. An exclusion zone of 30km around the Darwin general post office will also apply.
Russell Goldflam, president of the Northern Territory Criminal Lawyers Association, said the government needed to show evidence of the legislation’s effectiveness before embarking on the “intrusive” policy.
“This may be a reasonable measure to introduce but what we really need to be provided with before being able to assess whether it’s worth the inconvenience and intrusion to the privacy of the driving public, is to see whether or not these measures … have been effective in South Australia,” he told Guardian Australia.
“If it can be demonstrated by evidence there’s been real benefits from the increased police powers then there is an arguable case to be made for extending them to the Northern Territory.”
He said its operation was likely to involve checkpoints and time-consuming searches of all cars stopped, not just those under suspicion of carrying drugs. The searches were “much more intrusive” than random breath tests, he said.
“If this provision is enacted and declarations are made for commonly used highways, such as the Stuart highway … there’d be major disruption to perfectly innocent road users. I just don’t know yet whether it would be a worthwhile edition to the existing suite of police powers.”
When questioned on Monday on the impact the powers could have on regular motorists, Giles said there was a “high degree” of transparency and accountability within the NT police and “giving them more powers to stop ice and the scourge of drugs coming in to the Northern Territory from other jurisdictions is what it’s all about so we can help protect Territorians”.
William Boucault, chair of the South Australian Bar Association’s criminal law committee, told Guardian Australia the legislation has the potential for “great abuse” unless it was closely monitored.
“The section in South Australia, in my view, creates an infringement on the civil liberties of the citizen, because it in effect renders anyone travelling on that road liable to have the sniffer dog go through the car, to be directed by the police to open up any part of the car, to be detained and inconvenienced for no reason other than some police officer has said this road could be used to transport drugs,” he said.
“The problem with that is that it impacts on the ability of the citizen to simply go about his or her lawful day-to-day activities without being inconvenienced by these sort of tactics.
“To my mind it’s a joke, it’s an infringement on the liberties of the citizen and it makes for sloppy lazy police work and has the potential for I think great abuse.”
Boucault said there was potential for the limited roadblocks to be easily circumvented by drug traffickers, depending on the geography and if they had forewarning of a road’s designation as a drug route.
