Independent senators worried about lack of safeguards in bill proper oversight

In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors are ques­tion­ing whether the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill (SOB) leg­is­la­tion con­tains ad­e­quate safe­guards against the mis­use of its ex­tra­or­di­nary pow­ers.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors Michael Si­mon de la Bastide, An­tho­ny Vieira and Dr De­siree Mur­ray yes­ter­day raised con­cerns rang­ing from re­stric­tions on move­ment and de­ten­tion pow­ers to the ab­sence of manda­to­ry body-worn cam­eras and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment mea­sures.

De la Bastide said he could not sup­port the bill, ar­gu­ing that it ef­fec­tive­ly places state of emer­gency-type pow­ers in the hands of the Cab­i­net with­out suf­fi­cient ju­di­cial over­sight.