Knife laws 'send a message' as police wait for wands

Police in NSW are months away from being given metal-detector wands to scan people for blades but the government is saying that stronger laws around knife possession will send a message in the meantime.

NSW has doubled penalties for knife possession to a maximum of four years and introduced powers for police to use metal-detecting "wands" to scan for weapons in certain public places.

But those wanding powers will not be used until police are "operationally ready", NSW Attorney-General Michael Daley told a budget estimates hearing on Wednesday.

He was not immediately able to provide data on how many people had received an increased sentence following the tougher possession penalties.

Enforcement of the two laws was not their only intended purpose and they sent a message to young men to leave home without knives in their pocket, Mr Daley said.

He did not expect young men to be sitting down reading legislation, but they may get the message in other ways.

"When one of their friends gets picked up and they find out that the knife crime has doubled and he got a penalty and a sentence longer than they thought he might, then their ears might prick a little bit," Mr Daley said.

Police Minister Yasmin Catley told a hearing on Friday the type of metal-detecting wands police would use had not yet been decided.

NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Peter Thurtell said a trial could begin in December and more wands could be available for wider use in the second half of 2025.

Shadow attorney-general Alister Henskens told Sydney radio 2GB on Wednesday the government was not near to being able to implement its laws, which should also have given police more powers.

"We didn't want to have any restrictions on when police could wand people," he said.

Under the Labor laws, police will have discretionary power to scan people for weapons during limited-time operations in designated public places.

Police had also given assurances that the power would not be used discriminately, Mr Daley said.

However, the attorney-general conceded other, controversial law changes targeting young offenders would have a negative impact on the state meeting its Closing the Gap targets.

"They will result in a disproportionate number of Aboriginal young people being incarcerated," he said.

"Targets (for Indigenous incarceration rates) are not on track and they're worsening," Mr Daley said.

The reforms were approached cautiously given the potential consequences but the government had to act quickly to prevent people being hurt in home invasions or stolen cars packed with young people being wrapped around trees, he said.

"I understand these laws weren't popular and there was some opposition to it but we didn't have a choice," Mr Daley said.

Greens MP Sue Higginson said the attorney-general had more choices than anyone in NSW, but she was unable to secure an apology for what she described as "awful, racist, draconian laws".

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