The race discrimination watchdog privately raised concerns that plans to grant police new powers to demand the ID of anyone at an airport for any reason could lead to racial profiling.

The office of Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane flagged the risk of racial targeting under government proposals to allow police to conduct identity checks at airports without cause, The New Daily can reveal.

At present, police must suspect a crime has or will be committed before stopping a member of the public and requiring them to produce photo identification.

Although Dr Soutphommasane has not commented publicly on the plans, announced last month as part of a $294 million airport security package, emails obtained through freedom of information reveal how the proposals sparked alarm inside his office.

Race Discrimination Commissioner Dr Tim Soutphommasane. Photo: AAP

“The question is who would be considered to be suspicious,” Dr Soutphommasane’s communications adviser told the commissioner in one email, while quoting from an editorial criticising New York’s controversial stop-and-frisk program.

“Obviously this is a subjective matter. It’s well documented how law enforcement can engage in profiling because some groups come across as ‘suspicious’ more frequently (consider stop and frisk etc).”

In a follow-up email, the adviser sent Dr Soutphommasane an article about an American Civil Liberties Union study that found authorities at US airports engaged in the profiling of Arabs, Muslims and Latinos.

The internal discussions followed a media request for an interview with Dr Soutphommasane about the likelihood the government’s plans would lead to racial profiling.

“My view is that it’s generally not worth you commenting on every proposal that comes up,” the adviser, whose name is redacted, said in another email.

“This one might be an exception, though, because its (sic) being championed today by the PM. You could go down the path of racial profiling in general, and its impact… think this would inevitably lead you to your previous comments re racial profiling of African youth in Melb (sic).”

Dr Soutphommasane, whose five-year term ends in August, ultimately decided against the interview and has not publicly commented on the planned expansion of police powers.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said the measures are necessary to ensure the “safety of the Australian people”, while Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has described them as needed to correct an “anomaly and a deficiency in the law”.

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Andrew Colvin said last month that his agency had approached the government to request the changes.

“We believe this is a gap in our security at airports and, as such, we’ve been speaking to government about what measures might be reasonably brought in to address that gap,” he told a Senate committee hearing.

Various legal experts, however, have raised concerns about how the expansion of police authority could impact on privacy and racial and religious minorities.

Australian Council for Civil Liberties president and lawyer Terry O’Gorman said international experience showed that such powers were likely to be abused.

“We aren’t just predicting that racial profiling will occur, we’re saying that based on recent experience in the UK, where now the authorities have conceded that racial profiling has occurred when you’ve got the power to stop and demand a name and address without reason, that it follows that it will occur here,” he said.

“We say that the Caucasian, clean-cut male wearing a suit is less likely to be stopped than the dark-skinned person with a beard.”

A spokesman for Dr Soutphommasane said the commissioner would examine the government’s proposals closely once they were laid out in legislation.

“The government has not yet introduced its proposed bill,” Human Rights Commission media adviser Dominic O’Grady said.

“The Commissioner will examine the full details of the proposal when the bill is introduced. However, he has concerns about any proposal that would enable racial profiling.”