SYDNEY -- Tough new laws enforcing preventive detention of suspected terrorists will soon drastically change the laid-back response that Australia has so far allowed to the growing world threat of terrorism. But even before new laws start, the wails of protests from civil-liberty groups are deafening.
A raft of unusually tough legal reforms aimed at preventing Madrid- and London-style bomb horrors will soon be enforced. Despite shrill protests from a motley group of protesters ranging from Muslim immigrants to lawyers to civil-liberties campaigners, the Howard government is warning that the clampdown on hundreds of suspected terrorists living here could get even tougher.
With rare speed and unanimity, a Canberra summit of federal and state leaders agreed to head off what most Australians fear -- that religious extremists, sooner or later, will send shock waves through this open, tolerant society. For once, state premiers, whose powers Canberra must co-opt to make the measures work, endorsed the main trust of reforms put to them by Prime Minister John Howard.