The Australian government is proposing tougher censorship laws to ban extremist publications in a move resisted by some state governments and civil libertarians, the attorney-general said Wednesday.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said the proposal to ban books that "glorify, promote, incite or instruct people in the way in which serious acts of violence might be undertaken" would be on the agenda of a meeting of attorneys-general representing all of Australia's eight states and territories Thursday.

Ruddock last month tried to have federal censors ban seven Islamic texts that he described as "books of hate," but the Classification Review Board banned only two of them, ruling that they promoted illegal activities.

The two - "Defense of the Muslim Lands" and "Join the Caravan" - can no longer be sold or imported. Both books, about jihad, were discovered in a Sydney bookshop last year in the wake of the London bombings.

The censors' ruling came after an investigation by federal police and prosecutors concluded that the books did not constitute sedition under new anti-terror laws passed last year.

The fact that five of the texts investigated remained available on book shelves raised the question "whether the standard has been set at too high a level to deal with matters that might well be of real concern to the broader Australian community," Ruddock told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

The governments of the three most populous states - New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland - have made press statements saying they do not favor tightening their censorship laws as part of a tougher national regime.

Kristine Klugman, president of Civil Liberties Australia, said censorship standards were already stringent enough.

"This is just another instance where civil liberties are being attacked by this attorney-general and this federal government, and it's gone too far," Klugman told ABC.