But Benbrika said the men needed their mothers' permission to go on jihad.
Police said the men were an extremist sub-group of the religious Ahel al Sunna wal Jamaah Association, a Sunni Islamic group that follows a fundamentalist jihad ideology. They said the group had little or no respect for Australian law or society.
In Australia's biggest counter-terrorism swoop last week, 18 men were arrested and charged with offences including acts in preparation of a terrorist attack, being a member of a terrorist group and conspiracy to commit a terrorist act.
Nine men were arrested in Melbourne and nine in Sydney, one of whom was transferred to Melbourne on Monday. All have been remanded in custody and no pleas have been entered.
Police said the Sydney men had bought chemicals to produce "peroxide-based explosives" and had a computer memory stick containing instructions in Arabic to make explosives.
Between August and November 2005 the Sydney men had bought or ordered hundreds of liters of chemicals, steel drums, batteries, plastic piping, circuit kits, stopwatches and ammunition.
Police said during raids on the men's homes they seized chemicals, boxes of ammunition and firearms, machetes, samurai swords and books, cassettes and videos on terrorism and jihad.
During Benbrika's Melbourne court appearance last week, police said the cleric called bin Laden a "great man" that defends Muslims fighting U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Police told the court that one man had expressed a desire to become a "martyr" in Australia.
The Australia Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) earlier this month said for the first time that Australia had home-grown extremists, some of whom had trained overseas. Muslims make up 1.5 percent of Australia's 20 million population.
