Last week I produced a video for Guardian Australia on expanded Victoria police search powers in the Melbourne CBD. Days later, I experienced that power first-hand.

I was covering Sunday’s Put Australia First Rally in Melbourne. The area had just become a “designated area” for six months mere hours earlier. The protest had just begun. Stephanie Convery, my colleague, had stepped away, and so I was alone and away from protesters, standing just inside Flinders Street station with my video gear.

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Then two officers, both women, approached. They asked me if I knew that they were allowed to........

© The Guardian