Terror threat system not built for today’s dangers

Australia’s terrorism threat level system was never designed for the dangers now facing Jewish Australians and the wider community, the head of ASIO has warned.

Mike Burgess, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation has called  for an overhaul as he described a security environment that was both worsening and increasingly varied.

He was delivering his annual threat assessment in Canberra on Wednesday night, six months after the Bondi attack that targeted Jewish Australians and became the nation’s worst act of terrorism.

The audience stood for a minute’s silence for the victims before he spoke.

Guests were also shown a video montage of fraying social cohesion, including footage of protests, neo-Nazi activity and the aftermath of the Bondi attack.

The national threat level remains “probable”, meaning ASIO judges there is a greater than 50 per cent chance of an attack or attack planning within 12 months. But Burgess said the rating no longer told the full story.

“I do not believe the system was designed for a situation like the one we now face,” he said. He is in talks with Home Affairs Department Secretary Stephanie Foster about how it could change.

It was now too simplistic to assume a single main terrorist threat, Burgess said, describing a spectrum of extremism from neo-Nazi and Sunni violent extremists to people radicalised online within weeks rather than years.

Many were turning to low-capability attacks with little or no warning. He said social media was amplifying grievance and creating a permissive environment for violence.

On Iran, Burgess added fresh detail to attacks already linked to Tehran. He said the Iran-based Australian citizen who orchestrated the firebombing of Lewis Continental Kitchen in Bondi was understood to be a senior agent of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force.

A second man, recruited through local militia, was behind further firebombings, including the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne, and is now in an Iraqi prison.

Australia last year named Iran as the force behind the “summer of antisemitism” across 2024 and 2025, and expelled its ambassador.

Burgess said countering antisemitism was more than a “single, or simple, intelligence problem”. He drew a careful line on language around the conflict.

“I recognise criticism of the government of Israel is not of itself antisemitic, but some of the threatening statements made by the perpetrators go well beyond political protest or commentary,” he said.

He said the extremist groups ASIO monitored varied widely in ideology and “for the most part, they despise each other”, but were “united by a common hatred”.

Burgess defended ASIO’s resourcing, saying counter-terrorism staffing had doubled in a decade and grew further before Bondi. “Resourcing followed the threat,” he said. The agency had disrupted 31 major terrorism plots since 2014 and resolved 14 cases since the Bondi attack last December.

The address comes as the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion holds hearings, with ASIO’s actions in the lead-up to Bondi under scrutiny.