The ASIO Annual Report 2025-26 was tabled in Parliament on 22 October 2026.
Director-General’s review
Australia’s security environment is dynamic, diverse and degraded.
Over the last 12 months, instead of discrete risks, we confronted multifaceted instability where state-sponsored aggression and domestic volatility intersected.
The acute and persistent pressures of espionage, foreign interference, and politically motivated violence were at the centre of this convergence. However, the perimeter expanded.
The likelihood of communal violence increased as social cohesion strained, and nation-state hackers penetrated Australian critical infrastructure to pre‑position for potential sabotage.
This diversity of threats – concurrent, cascading and compounding – represents a systematic challenge to national security.
Australia's security environment
Threats to life
Australia’s national terrorism threat level remains PROBABLE – ASIO assesses there is a greater than 50% chance of an attack or attack planning in the next 12 months – but ‘probable’ does not convey the real risk.
While ASIO does not have specific intelligence to justify raising the level to EXPECTED, we assess acts of politically motivated violence, including terrorism, are more likely than PROBABLE suggests.
Personal grievance, intolerance and anti-authority beliefs are growing, amplified by social media and the normalisation of inflammatory rhetoric, violent language and violent acts.
Together, these factors are creating a permissive environment where violence
is increasingly accepted and expected, compounding the likelihood of further violence.
The most likely act of terrorism involves an individual or small group moving to violence with little to no warning, and using rudimentary weapons such as firearms – as occurred with such horrific consequences at Bondi.
In last year’s annual report, I put my concerns on the record:
“Australia [has] entered a period of strategic surprise and security fragility…
[O]verseas tensions and conflicts continue… to resonate locally,
with sentiment amplified by social media and online echo chambers…Spikes in politically motivated violence [have] raised the temperature of the security environment and made acts of terrorism more likely.”
Threats to life are further complicated and exacerbated by nation states brazenly directing acts of terrorism, as we saw with the arson attacks against the Jewish communities in Melbourne and Sydney perpetrated by criminals directed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iran remains committed to advancing its anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic agenda, and continues to view Australia as a legitimate target for covertly directed acts of violence. I cannot rule out the possibility the regime will orchestrate additional acts of arson and vandalism, and could even attempt assassinations on Australian soil.
Threats to our way of life
Great power competition is driving an insatiable appetite for strategic advantage. As a result, espionage and foreign interference are at extreme levels, while preparation for sabotage is growing in scale and sophistication.
While countering threats to life will always be a priority for ASIO, we cannot ignore threats to our way of life. Indeed, in extreme cases, they can be threats to life as well.
In 2025–26, ASIO investigated multiple examples:
- Coerced repatriations – a form of foreign interference – where Australia-based indi viduals are made to return to the country of their birth to face persecution, prosecution, imprisonment or worse.
- Attempts to covertly obtain secrets associated with AUKUS and other defence capabilities, putting Australia’s war fighters and strategic advantage at risk.
- Multiple attempts to compromise the networks of critical infrastructure providers. ASIO assesses the hackers were seeking the ability to switch off the networks in the future if geopolitical tensions boiled over.
ASIO's response
Countering terrorism
ASIO remains aggressively postured to counter the evolving and complex nature of modern terrorism threats. Working with our law enforcement partners, we have foiled 33 major terrorism plots since 2014, and scores of less advanced – but still potentially deadly – terror-related cases in the same period. This includes 15 significant cases since the Bondi attack.
We have sharpened our responses, adjusted our thresholds and are continually evolving our capabilities. I welcome the government’s recent investment in the ASIO and AFP Counter Terrorism Online Centre. In a security environment where radicalisation increasingly occurs online, and extremists increasingly engage with each other in encrypted chat groups, ASIO must be online too.
Countering espionage and foreign interference
ASIO continues to detect and deter foreign intelligence services operating in Australia. Working with the counter-terrorism team, our counter-intelligence team unpicked Iran’s involvement in anti-Semitic attacks.
In another case, ASIO officers not only stopped an attempt to recruit an Australian with access to AUKUS, they personally contacted the foreign intelligence officer to deliver a clear message: we have zero tolerance.
Top Secret-Privileged Access vetting
In 2025–26, the TS-PA Vetting Authority within ASIO continued to deliver Australia’s highest-level security clearances for the Commonwealth.
By leveraging ASIO’s specialised intelligence capabilities and conducting comprehensive, real-time security assessments, the TS-PA Vetting Authority plays a critical role in safeguarding Australia from the threat of espionage and foreign interference. Over the past 12 months, ASIO maintained strong agency relationships, scaled its capacity to meet growing demand, and achieved its TS-PA performance target.
Influence and impact
Recognising many of the dynamics shaping our security environment are not things ASIO can address alone, we released hundreds of classified products and held face-to-face briefings across government and the business community to help our stakeholders identify, understand and manage security threats.
And recognising some of our stakeholders cannot access classified material, I delivered key speeches including my Annual Threat Assessment, an address to the ASIC Annual Forum, and the 2025 Lowy Lecture.
In August, ASIO launched an ambitious, multifaceted, public-facing protective securitycampaign, Counting and Countering the Cost of Espionage.
The campaign built on the Australian Institute of Criminology’s calculation that espionage cost Australia $12.5 billion in one year.
Counting and Countering the Cost of Espionage received overwhelmingly positive feed back from government, industry and academia.
Multiple departments and companies refined their security practices and policies. Home Affairs updated the Protective Security Policy Framework to prevent security clearance holders advertising their clearances online.
There was a spike in espionage leads received from the National Security Hotline, and an increase in subscribers to ASIO’s Outreach portal – direct and important measures of the value of our efforts.
Conclusion
The temperature and trajectory of the security environment are concerning.
While I am proud of ASIO’s work detecting and countering threats over 2025–26, we will need to keep our decision-making around resourcing, prioritisation and capability development under constant review in the year ahead.
We should not be insecure about our security, but we must be realistic about our strategic circumstances.
Security is a shared responsibility. By addressing known vulnerabilities and responsibly managing known risks, we can all help make Australia a harder and more resilient target.
Mike Burgess AM
Director-General of Security