The Australian Senate rushed through anti-terror laws yesterday as Prime Minister John Howard denied his warning about a credible threat of attack was a diversion from the government's political problems.
Howard called the extraordinary Senate sitting a day after he told the public that current terror laws needed to be urgently amended so police and intelligence services could respond to the threat.
But the government did not raise its terror alert status from medium to high and Howard yesterday played down the prospect that his national warning meant that an actual terrorist attack was imminent.
"That doesn't mean that something is going to happen in the next few days," he told a commercial radio station.
Howard refused to reveal details of the alleged plot that prompted his warning, saying only "the concerns we have are not totally related to matters distant to Australia."
The lack of detail led critics of the conservative government to accuse Howard of issuing the warning to help push through a raft of new anti-terrorism laws that critics say are a threat to civil liberties.
They said the warning also diverted attention from unpopular workplace reforms the conservative government introduced to parliament this week.
Australian Council for Civil Liberties president Terry O'Gorman said while Australia's involvement in the US-led war in Iraq meant it was at risk of a terrorist attack, many people were questioning the urgency of the situation.
"People are cynical about the timing," he said.
Howard, however, said that any suggestion the warning was a diversion was "absurd."
"This idea that yesterday was some giant manipulative conspiracy is ridiculous ... this idea that it was all manipulated timing is ridiculous," he said.
Howard received support from several members of the intelligence community, who said there had long been "chatter" about the possibility of a terrorist attack on Melbourne, Australia's second-largest city.
Clive Williams, a former member of the Australian intelligence service now lecturing on terrorism at the Australian National University, said his sources told him the plot involved three suspects in Sydney and Melbourne, one of whom had links to Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Williams said the suspects were believed to have filmed potential targets in Melbourne and their actions had led to three raids in Sydney in June this year.
Williams said the government and intelligence were erring on the side of caution by publicly acting on the threat.
"It's now compromised the operation and means that it will probably be very difficult to get a conviction," he said.
"The alternative of course was to allow it to go through to the point where there was specificity as to time and place, but then there's the danger of it getting closer to fruition, so maybe the government didn't want to take that chance."
The amendment passed by the Senate yesterday will allow police to immediately act against suspects involved in the early stages of planning attacks, instead of forcing them to wait until they have obtained specific details of an imminent attack.
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