No Games terror threat, says Ruddock

There is no evidence of terrorists targeting the Commonwealth Games, according to the latest Federal Government intelligence assessments.

While it is impossible to protect the country's "entire infrastructure", no group or individual has been identified as capable of attacking, or intending to attack the Games, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said in response to a report suggesting the Games athletes' village was a soft target.

Mr Ruddock made the comments in a letter following a vulnerability assessment report of the athletes' village by a Melbourne lobby group opposed to the village's Royal Park location.

In the report, Dr Barry Clark, security spokesman for the Royal Park Protection Group, said official security plans for the Games village appeared to be seriously deficient in counter-terrorism methods.

There appeared to be none of the counter-measures needed to provide even a modest level of protection for terrorist action starting outside the village, he said. Dr Clark said the London bombings, three months after his report was finalised, should have changed official security assessments of threats to the Games, but a spokeswoman for Mr Ruddock yesterday said that the assessment was unchanged.

"Our advice, post-London, indicates no change to threat levels within Australia," the spokeswoman said. "For there to be any change in the threat level to Australia, agencies would have to be in receipt of information relating to an imminent attack."

In his report, Dr Clark, a former defence scientist, canvassed terrorist actions that could be launched against the Royal Park village. These included car bombings, hijacking fuel tankers, attacking gas and water supplies, firing mortars from adjacent streets and using the CityLink tollway or light aircraft for launching explosives or biological agents.

Mr Ruddock said the report provided a good synopsis of what terrorist attacks could do to the village, but the same tactics could be applied anywhere.