Nervous Australia to tighten security

An increasingly nervous Australia will turn to Britain for advice and possibly adopt even tougher anti-terrorism laws following the latest bomb outrages in London.

With a sense of inevitability about an eventual terror attack on the continent, counter-terrorism agencies are also further clamping down on militant Islamic fundamentalism within Australia - most recently bookstores in Sydney and Melbourne selling literature urging jihad against the West.

Prime Minister John Howard, in London during the latest incidents, said British experts would visit Australia to check for weaknesses in the nation's wall against terror.

Australian police and transport officials are already in London examining the first bombings, and will brief the national counter-terrorism committee on their return.

Despite a raft of new laws giving sweeping powers to the domestic spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), and other bodies, Mr Howard foreshadowed further legislation.

"The laws dealing with terrorists were framed when the terrorists didn't have available the technology," he said during a grim press conference with British counterpart Tony Blair.

"We have a 19th-century legal response to potentially 21st-century technological terrorist capacity."

Security officials in Canberra were yesterday meeting to decide whether to lift the medium level of alert following the London bombings, which also this week prompted a review of Australia's land transport security arrangements.

NSW Premier Bob Carr, who has advocated adoption of the new laws now being proposed in Britain, launched a New York-style campaign to encourage Sydneysiders to report unattended bags or suspicious activities on the city's trains and buses.

"You can't escape the reality that we are clearly in [terrorists'] sights, as it were," Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said. "Should people know that they should prepare for such a possibility? Of course."

NSW Deputy Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione agreed: "I'm in the business of protecting this state ... and I think our communities expect us to be prepared.

"It's on that basis that we've adopted the stance of getting ready for when [a terror attack] happens - not if."

The ASIO's latest assessment is that Australia is a terror target.