Anti-gang laws adequate, says lawyer PRIME Minister Julia Gillard's plan to have the states refer their anti-gang powers to the federal government is a cynical election ploy and power grab, a peak civil liberties group says. Ms Gillard on Wednesday announced she would ask the state and territory leaders to hand over anti-gang powers and put in place national laws. Australian Council for Civil Liberties president Terry O'Gorman said there were adequate laws and powers in place to deal with cross-border organised crime. "This is a naked power grab by a government that does what all governments do when they are in trouble and that is beat the law and order drum," Mr O'Gorman told AAP on Wednesday. All of the proposals announced existed through the Australian police commissioners' conference, the police ministers' council, and through the national intelligence gathering role of the Australian Crime Commission. State anti-gang laws were able to take into account "local conditions." "So you would have anti-gang legislation in a territory which would reflect the tenor of legislation in larger states but be tailored to a smaller population and the smaller anti-gang problem," Mr O'Gorman said. In any case, state governments were awaiting the result of a High Court challenge to Queensland's anti-bikie laws - due within weeks - before deciding on further legislation. Mr O'Gorman said seizure of proceeds of crime laws had been in place since the late 1980s and civil laws on unexplained wealth had existed for a decade. He said redistributing the seized wealth to the states would stir up a similar debate to the GST distribution. The federal government was to blame for the influx of firearms, having failed to properly resource the customs service and subject it to the law enforcement anti-corruption watchdog, Mr O'Gorman said. The problem was not that the laws were inadequate, he said, but that the federal government had dragged its feet for years in subjecting them to Australian law enforcement integrity oversight. "Firearms have been waved through at the border," he said.