Police will be given more powers to search arrivals to Western Australia in a bid to prevent the importation of drugs, the police minister says.
Minister Paul Papalia said the changes would be part of a suite of amendments aimed at mimicking powers granted to police during the pandemic.
"What happened when all the borders were shut tight, every single person coming into WA was met by a police officer," he said.
"That had an incredible impact."
Mr Papalia said under the changes, all travellers to WA would not be met by police officers but there would be additional search powers available at airports, ports, railway stations and similar locations.
But he denied this represented the introduction of "stop and search" laws into WA, which would give police broad powers to target certain citizens without judicial oversight.
"It will enable a lot more power to search without warrant in certain locations, but there will still be obligations around who you search and why," he said.
"It's very specific areas, very specific locations and it will all be predicated on intelligence in who you search.
"They're not going to be necessarily randomly stopping people."
Plan raises fears over ethnic profiling
But Ethnic Communities Council WA president Suresh Rajan warned any relaxation of human rights protections would disproportionately impact vulnerable minority groups.
He said there was a risk of racial profiling by police.
Mr Rajan questioned why it was necessary to enhance search powers when a warrant could be used.
"In the case of people who are supposedly suspected, on the basis of just a gut feeling, by the policeman or the policewoman that is actually applying that law, I think that that's a very dangerous area.
"You're really now starting to say that we're imposing the full letter of the law on the basis of a profile, on the basis of a stereotype which the profile is based on."
Drug imports into WA plummeted behind closed border
Mr Papalia said methamphetamine use and importation had fallen dramatically during the border closure, before Western Australia reopened its doors to the rest of the world in March.
Police said since January this year they had seized more than $3.5 million in cash, 84 kilograms of cannabis and 38 kilograms of methamphetamine, and 155 charges had been laid.
Mr Papalia also said the closed border had given police an opportunity to use technology in their intelligence operations to isolate who was bringing drugs into the state.
"It reduced the flow of people into the state, gave us an opportunity to use technology in intelligence and combine those things to isolate much more accurately who was bringing in serious amounts of drugs, and then catching them," he said.
"We're going to give powers that attempt to replicate that sort of impact."
Plan for stronger powers to be in force by end of year
The Minister said the amendments would be made to WA's Misuse of Drugs and Surveillance Devices Act, and they would be in place by the end of the year.
During the pandemic, police were asked to administer the G2G pass, an application filled out by anyone who wished to enter the state.
The G2G pass is no longer required but the database of information on arrivals to WA, which is collected by police, remains.
Travellers had to agree to police storing and using the information for activities not limited to the pandemic.
Later it emerged WA Police had accessed information provided on the app for criminal investigations.
In July last year, Mr Papalia told parliament police could access the database anytime and did not require special approval to do so.
It was also revealed another application — Safe WA — was used by police in criminal investigations including the high-profile shooting murder of bikie Nick Martin at a Perth raceway.
This was despite the then health minister assuring people the data would only ever be used for pandemic-related contact tracing and accessed by WA Health staff.
The revelation sparked condemnation from privacy advocates.
Enhanced powers allowed police to 'stand on throat' of traffickers
Premier Mark McGowan said he could not get WA Police's agreement not to access that database again and the government was ultimately forced to amend legislation to stop them.
Police Commissioner and soon-to-be Governor Chris Dawson last year advocated for more stop and search powers at border points.
At the time, the Premier said he would "work within the law" to achieve an increased police presence at border points.
Commissioner Dawson told ABC Perth this morning the beefed up powers and border closure had allowed police to "stand on the throat of drug traffickers".
"We are very loudly proclaiming that this is not going to be stopping because the COVID pandemic has reached a different phase."
