Controversial new laws that give NSW Police the power to restrict people's movements are a serious attack on individual freedoms, Greens MP David Shoebridge says.
The Baird government legislation, which passed through the NSW Parliament upper house late on Wednesday, allows police to obtain new crime prevention orders that can impose curfews on citizens for up to five years, restrict people's movements or ban them from employment.
"These laws are a threat to basic rights and individual freedoms and remove key protections from our criminal justice system," Mr Shoebridge said.
"We have seen in the past that (discretional) police powers have a disproportionate impact on vulnerable people, and these new public safety orders will inevitably work in the same way," he said on Thursday.
Under the legislation, public safety orders will allow police to ban people from attending specific events or locations for up to 72 hours with a maximum five-year imprisonment for breaching such an order.
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Justice and Police Minister Troy Grant said the two bills were aimed at disrupting the activities of organised crime and bikie gangs.
"These laws show we are serious about crippling organised crime in NSW and taking strong action to protect public safety," he said.
But Mr Shoebridge is concerned the orders could be applied to "entirely innocent people who never had an intention to be involved in any criminal activity".
"The Bar Association, the Law Society, the International Commission of Jurists and the Council for Civil Liberties have all labelled these laws a gross affront to the rule of law and democracy but this means nothing to the arrogant Baird government," he said.
