Outer Joins

I come from an Oracle background and have noted that postgres 7.1 supports outer joins...but I'm not sure of the syntax. Note below in the first AND clause the (+) next to k.permit_id, I need to get the nulls back as well as the value but I get an error when I use (+)

SELECT t.permit_id, t.issue_date, t.issued_by, t.location, t.purpose ||' '|| t.subpurpose as spurpose, t.date_from, t.date_to, t.permit_conditions, t.other_info, k.key_code, p.person_id, p.firstname ||' '|| p.lastname as name
FROM person p, forest_permit t, permit_key k
WHERE p.person_id = t.person_id
AND t.permit_id = k.permit_id(+)
AND p.lastname LIKE 'Bloggs'
AND p.firstname LIKE 'Joe'
ORDER BY t.issue_date

Best Regards,

Sharon Cowling