Australians anxiously await terror attack

This week, as Australia for the second time mourned the victims of terror in Bali, the nation faced the reality that as far ahead as anyone could see, its people, cities, institutions and businesses will be targets for Islamic radicals.

"There are no guarantees," said Victorian Police Commissioner Christine Nixon, whose responsibilities include the defence of next year's Melbourne Commonwealth Games.

"You can do your best to prevent things happening to communities and protect them, and they're the sort of steps that we'd put in place.

"But if you saw what happened in Bali, its restaurants, people just walking in and out of restaurants - there's no real capacity to protect people in that kind of environment, and that's the difficulty."

Nixon's grim warning on ABC radio was echoed by Prime Minister John Howard on radio in Newcastle, the home of three of the four Australian victims of last week's bombs.

"There is no end to what [precautions can be taken], but there does come a point where taking additional precautions is counterproductive," he said.

"For example, we could search every bag of every person who boarded a train - now you could do that but you wouldn't, because it would bring the nation to a standstill."

Howard says the latest bombing has not increased the likelihood of an attack on Australia. But his reasoning is small comfort, arguing that the risk already existed, cemented by repeated warnings from al Qaeda and jailed Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who supported the use of nuclear weapons by terrorists.

Certainly, Australia has no plans to increase the level of its four-stage terror alert, at present sitting on medium, below the high level applying to Indonesia, and the yet-to-be-invoked peak of "extreme". Despite a special alert in November 2002 based on credible, but generalised, information of a possible attack on Australia, authorities say there has been no specific intelligence to justify an increase in the threat level.

But police and counter-terror agencies have warned it is only a matter of time before Australia is directly attacked, as its interests already have been abroad. In September last year a car bomb outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta killed 11 people - including the bomber - and injured more than 100.

Opinion polling consistently finds Australians expect to be bombed, and that most believe their vulnerability has rocketed because of support for the United States and, particularly, the war in Iraq.

Bashir, through spokesman Fauzan al-Anshari, this week confirmed radical Islam's view on ABC radio, saying that as long as Australia followed the United States it remained a potential target for terror. "The Americans are the commanders. Australia is the sheriff."

The danger exists within and without. Domestic counter-terror agencies have uncovered a number of plots to attack national icons, prosecuted alleged terrorists and raided dozens of houses to head off potential attacks by home-grown bombers.

A short boat-ride away lies Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation, with a vast, impoverished population vulnerable to indoctrination and recruitment to terror organisations, such as Jemaah Islamiyah, which carried out the 2002 Bali bombings and is suspected in last Saturday's attack.

Burdened by decades of diplomatic baggage, Australia walks a fragile path with Indonesia. Although relations have improved under the presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and post-2002 co-operation, a great deal of resentment lingers from the loss of East Timor and ingrained anti-Australianism, fuelled by Australian anger about the jailing of convicted Queensland drug smuggler Schapelle Corby and perceived intervention by Canberra in Indonesia's domestic affairs.

This week Howard insisted Jakarta ban Jemaah Islamiyah and overturn a second automatic reduction in the 30-month sentence imposed on Bashir for complicity in the 2002 bombings, granted under the month-long Muslim festival of Ramadan.

"It has certainly been put forcefully to the Indonesian Government that any further remissions, however small, however automatic, however general, given to him will cause deep and lasting anger in our country."

There are also concerns that although police co-operation has remained excellent since 2002, relations between the intelligence agencies of the two countries has been far from perfect, a point noted by Labor leader Kim Beazley.

"We need a proper intelligence-sharing network - not the occasional sporadic donation, a bit of intelligence here and there, which is being done at this moment," Beazley said.

In the meantime, the fear of terror is changing the way Australians live.

They have grown used to increasing intense and intrusive security measures, and have accepted almost without objection harsh new counter-terror laws that civil liberties groups warn will infringe on basic human rights.

Ethnic tensions have also risen. Muslim organisations complain their communities have been targeted unfairly by counter-terror laws and agencies, and that new consultation with the Government has included only moderates amenable to its point of view.

On the horizon are huge security measures for next March's Commonwealth Games in Melbourne and the 2007 Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Sydney, with a host of other smaller - but still important - exercises to protect, such as the Australian Open tennis championships and Spring Racing Carnival in Melbourne.

And while Bali remains popular - more Australians visited the island in the eight months to last August than in the same period in 2001 - a new reluctance to travel there has emerged after last weekend.

Nerves will be jangled further by the Government's decision to include even rumours of possible attacks in future travel advice and predictions such as Beazley's warning that the war on terror will last another 20 years.