Australian police urgently need a new national intelligence database to prevent terrorist attacks, state and federal police union leaders say.
Police representatives from around the country have met in Adelaide to discuss key measures they say will help protect police and the community from terrorism.
These include replacing two 30-year-old Australian criminal intelligence systems with one real-time system to improve access to intelligence for state police officers.
A national case management system for criminal investigations was also identified as a way to improve collaboration and information sharing between state forces.
"Every Australian police force holds a significant amount of data about incidents and events that occur in that jurisdiction," Police Federation of Australia chief executive Mark Burgess told reporters.
"However the systems operate in isolation from each other, limiting the opportunity to take a national view of incidents - even when it comes to cross-border policing investigations."
PFA President Mark Carroll said the current system does not give local police quick access to national intelligence.
He illustrated this point with an example of a South Australian officer pulling over a driver.
"Unless (the driver) is a South Australian, (police) are going to have no chance of identifying quickly enough whether that person could be someone we need to know about," he told reporters.
"If acts of terror do continue to occur we want to be prepared before the event, not regretful after it."
Mr Carroll urged Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to make funding available in the next budget for "better technology and resources so that we can do our job".
He also called for smarter, more secure police stations in the wake of recent domestic terror attacks, including the fatal shooting of police accountant Curtis Cheng in Sydney's west earlier this month.
"This has happened on the eastern sea board but not across the country, which makes police stations with less sophisticated security easier targets," he said.
"We know that after 9/11 airports in this country were all hardened at the same time.
"That is not happening to police stations."
The PFA said these initiatives could be funded in part by profits seized from organised crime.
It proposed laws be introduced that put the onus on criminals to prove their profits are from legitimate businesses rather than on police to prove they are illegal.
