CANBERRA : Australia's government rushed controversial emergency anti-terrorist legislation through parliament after Prime Minister John Howard said he had received credible reports of a planned terror attack against the country.
Critics quickly suggested the timing of Howard's announcement of an unspecified terror plot was linked to his government's plans to push through a raft of new anti-terror laws that have been labelled a threat to civil liberties.
But Howard said that following the new alert from security agencies, he had obtained the support of political leaders from across the political spectrum to alter existing legislation so that police could act against suspected terrorists even before they had details of a specific planned attack.
"We have decided to alter the existing terrorism legislation to substitute for a current provision which says that in order to prove a charge you have to prove an established preparation for a specific terrorist act with a more general provision providing for a terrorist attack," he said.
The new amendment would add further grounds for banning groups and "clarify that, in a prosecution for a terrorism offence, it is not necessary to identify a particular terrorist act," Howard said. "It will be sufficient for the prosecution to prove that the particular conduct was related to a terrorist act."The amendment is part of controversial new anti-terror laws that the government drafted after the London transport bombings by British-born Muslims in July that killed more than 50 people.
The new laws, under which suspects can be detained without charge for up to two weeks, placed under house arrest and fitted with tracking devices, have been widely criticised as infringing on civil liberties. Australia has not been attacked on its own turf but Australian interests have been targeted elsewhere.
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