Momena Shoma, 28, was already a convicted terrorist when she stabbed a woman with gardening shears at Melbourne's Dame Phyllis Frost Centre in October last year.

She said the attack was for "terrorism reasons" and celebrated when she learned she'd be charged.

Shoma pleaded guilty to engaging in a terrorist act and being a member of a terrorist organisation.

"Yeah I have done it, I'm just proud of myself," Shoma told investigators.

While she had set out to kill, her 27-year-old victim walked away with a hand injury that required just five stitches.

Shoma had spent months planning the attack and intentionally targeted a Canadian inmate for propaganda reasons.

"If a Canadian got killed of course it would make Canadian newspapers and news outlets," she said.

Shoma said she had become more radicalised and would attack again if allowed access to other prisoners - suggesting she might target a Russian person next time.

She claimed she had pretended to be deradicalised while taking part in anti-terror programs in prison.

"If I get released I'll do it again to let Allah know I'm strict," she said.

In a Victorian Supreme Court pre-sentence hearing her lawyer Tim Marsh said her guilty plea wasn't indicative of remorse but indeed the opposite.

He said prison was as restrictive for her as could be imagined - she's alone for 23 hours a day and only allowed out of her cell wearing manacles and with no other prisoners around.

Given her offending he wasn't suggesting the response by prison authorities was unwarranted.

"It might be suggested she is the architect of her own misfortune here and I'd have a very difficult time in arguing against that," he said.

Shoma is already serving a 42-year prison sentence over a February 2018 attack on Roger Singaravelu, a homestay host who welcomed Shoma into his home when she arrived to study in Melbourne from Bangladesh.

He was stabbed in the neck with such force the blade snapped and embedded in his spine. His five-year-old daughter was with him.

He survived the attack but he and his daughter both suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Shoma is not eligible for parole until 2049.

Mr Marsh said additional time would need to be added to that sentence for the prison attack, but urged Justice Jane Dixon to leave open the possibility of release.

"It's impossible to imagine what our society, what our culture, our environment, what our circumstances will be like when Ms Shoma is eligible for release," he said.

"If we can't even do that how can we ... be certain Ms Shoma has not changed her ideological beliefs by then?"

She'll be sentenced at a later date.

Australian Associated Press