Mobile phones are being used as currency in immigration detention centres and should be banned, the federal government says.
Phones are also used to distribute drugs, maintain criminal enterprises and threaten detainees, according to assistant minister Michael Sukkar who has defended a bill to prohibit phones and other items from detention centres.
But opponents of the bill, which passed the lower house on Wednesday, have labelled it cruel and will seek to block it becoming law.
Independent MP Cathy McGowan has labelled the proposed laws poor and disproportionate.
"In fact I'd go so far as to say its cruel," she said.
The legislation proposes to ban drugs, weapons and child exploitation material, as well as anything the minister determines pose a health, safety or security risk.
Legal experts have suggested that could extend to mobile phones or medications.
Nick Xenophon Team MP Rebekha Sharkie said the bill was awash with ministerial overreach and her Senate colleague Stirling Griff would seek to move amendments.
NXT represent a significant voting bloc in the Senate. Labor and the Greens will also oppose the bill in the upper house.
"The government has been at pains to say they are free to come and go from detention centres in Nauru and Manus, so why would we deny them simple liberties such as mobile phones to communicate if they are not indeed prisoners," Ms Sharkie said on Wednesday.
But Mr Sukkar said increasing numbers of convicted criminals were being held in immigration detention centres ahead of deportation, including child sex offenders and people with links to organised crime.
"(Phones are also) a commodity of exchange because currently illegal maritime arrival detainees are not permitted phones but all other detainees are," he said.
The bill would also give the government greater search and seizure powers, including the use of detector dogs.
