National security and economic growth on agenda at COAG meeting

State and territory leaders will focus on national security and economic growth when they sit down with the Prime Minister today for a Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting.

They will get an update on the recent police raids in three states and the decision to lift the terrorism alert level to high.

The high-level security briefing will also include information on the new counter-terrorism laws.

Tasmania's Premier Will Hodgman will raise his concerns about the decision to remove the federal police from Hobart's airport.

"We're very disappointed. We wouldn't want people to see Tasmania as a soft target or an easy option for any sort of terrorist activity," Mr Hodgman said.

"We've got every right in our state to feel protected and I'll be continuing to have this discussion with my federal colleagues.

The leaders will also be briefed on next month's G20 summit in Brisbane where world leaders will discuss the target of lifting global growth by 2 per cent in the next five years.

Mr Hodgman is hoping his state's much needed extra growth could be sparked through Chinese tourism - if he succeeds in getting the Chinese president Xi Jinping to visit the island state after the G20 summit.

"It would be a fantastic opportunity for us to seize a visit from the president. We're working hard to secure that. Our fingers are crossed and we are very hopeful that that visit will in fact materialise," the Premier said as he arrived in Canberra.

NT pushing for gas pipeline, WA raising GST distribution

Northern Territory leader Adam Giles will be pushing the proposed billion-dollar gas pipeline linking the Northern Territory to the east coast.

"I think it's something that really is a nation building project. Canberra wants to get behind it," Mr Giles said.

Mr Giles, Queensland Premier Campbell Newman and Western Australia's Premier Colin Barnett will hold a separate gathering about Northern Australian development today, with Mr Barnett highlighting the Ord River project.

"There is sufficient water for the irrigation areas to go into the Northern Territory. We support that, so I hope we can make some progress there," Mr Barnett said.

He will also raise his long-running anger about the GST distribution.

"Western Australia has the strongest economy in any standard but we are going broke because the Commonwealth Government is taking $3.7 billion out of Western Australia and giving it to the other states," Mr Barnett said.

SA leader 'furious' education is not on COAG agenda

GST will be on the agenda as the leaders discuss the upcoming white paper on tax and on the federation.

But South Australia's Jay Weatherill - said that process is too focused on returning service delivery to the states rather than having a cooperative model.

"It seems that what's behind the white paper is returning us to 1901 and the difficulty with that is that it's 2014 and an extraordinary amount has changed," the South Australian leader said.

"Just taking the health care system for one, I mean we can't run an effective public hospital system if the entry points, which are the GPs running by the Commonwealth, and the exit points, the aged care system run by the Commonwealth, don't work cooperatively together.

"So it is a nonsense to suggest that somehow we retreat into our corners and the Commonwealth just does this massive cost shift by handing us the public health system," Mr Weatherill said.

Mr Weatherill is also furious education funding is not on today's agenda.

"Well the last communique said it would be debated at this meeting of the COAG and its not surprising the Prime Minister doesn't want to debate it because it amounts to a broken promise to fund education," he said.

A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister said education would be discussed broadly and as part of the white papers.

The premiers are likely to agree on another step towards making it easier to adopt children from overseas - and that could go further with talks on the different laws between states on surrogacy - including where people make commercial arrangements with surrogate mothers overseas.