CANBERRA - Australia's government is playing politics with anti-terrorism laws by unveiling plans to deploy troops in the event of an attack just days after it warned of an undisclosed terrorist threat, opposition parties said on Monday.
They accused Prime Minister John Howard of scaremongering in a bid to divert attention from controversial labour reforms after the government said its urgent amendments to anti-terrorism laws last week may not result in any arrests.
The government denied the claims.
"We've seen now twice the terror card played by the government as a way of seeking to garner support for their moves and making sure industrial relations isn't on the front page of the newspapers," Greens Senator Kerry Nettle told reporters.
Howard's warning of a terrorist threat, of which he has refused to give details, and the law changes have overshadowed debate in parliament on labour reforms that are a centrepiece of Howard's fourth-term agenda but are unpopular with voters.
"It's about time the Howard government stopped playing politics with our national security because frankly it's just too important," main opposition Labor politician Anthony Albanese told reporters.
But Foreign Minister Alexander Downer denied on Monday the government was being alarmist.
"The government's nowhere near an election, has years until the next election. We have no motive to put out alarmist material," Downer told Australian television.
"But we must do our job. The first responsibility of any Australian government is to protect the Australian people and we are living in an environment where there are threats of terrorist attacks," he said. "We just cannot afford to be complacent."
Australia, a staunch U.S. ally with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, has never suffered a major peacetime attack on home soil. The country has been on medium security alert since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Shoot To Kill
Defence Minister Robert Hill said on Sunday he wanted laws allowing the deployment of troops with shoot-to-kill powers to be passed before the Commonwealth Games was held in Australia's second-biggest city, Melbourne, in March.
The move comes after the upper house Senate was urgently recalled on Thursday to pass amendments to make it easier for police to arrest suspects just a day after Howard revealed a possible terrorist threat had come to light.
"It seems the government is unveiling these strategies one after the other to keep Australian citizens in a perpetual state of fear," Democrats Senator Natasha Stott Despoja told reporters.
Queensland state's Labor Premier Peter Beattie accused Hill of unnecessarily alarming people by emphasising that troops would be given shoot-to-kill powers.
"People would expect, if there was a major terrorism incident in this country, that the army would have a role to play," Beattie told Australian radio. "I just think sometimes the language used is unnecessary."
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