Director-General of Security, Mike Burgess AM
6 May 2026
Australia's National Terrorism Threat Level remains at PROBABLE but I am also concerned about the temperature and trajectory of our security environment.
The most likely act of politically motivated violence will occur with little to no warning, and in ways that are difficult to detect.
In the last few months, Australia has endured:
- the tragic terrorist attack at Bondi
- a Western Australian man charged with terrorism offences after allegedly throwing a home-made bomb into an Indigenous rally, and
- a man charged with allegedly planning a mass casualty attack on WA's Parliament House, police headquarters and mosques.
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.
I continue to be extremely concerned by the number of young people, particularly young men, who are being radicalised online and mobilising to violence relatively quickly, with little to no warning.
The extremists we look at, almost by definition, are security conscious and suspicious of outsiders.
People who self-radicalise online often show few, if any, real world indicators they are mobilising to violence.
Online operations are often the only way we can identify and engage with these individuals to understand their intent, capability, identity and targets.
In January this year, ASIO's covert online operations team gained access to a neo-Nazi group chat.
One of the participants allegedly posted violent extremist material.
We acted immediately.
Posing as a violent extremist, one of our operators engaged directly with the individual, trying to determine their identity and assess whether it was just big talk or something more sinister.
Our intelligence led to the action by the WA Police, resulting in a man being charged with allegedly planning a mass casualty attack.
This highlights the capability need and demonstrates the benefit.
I therefore welcome the Government's decision to invest directly in these capabilities.
Gaining access to extremists and their chat groups requires training, resources, time, specialist knowledge and specialist technology.
The investment will uplift the number of people we, ASIO and the AFP, have engaging in online operations and invest in the tools they need to help identify and disrupt targets before they move to real-world violence.
The challenge posed by online radicalisation and encryption is significant and continue to grow.
This investment will improve our ability to identify:
- Sunni violent extremists
- nationalist and racist violent extremists
- anarchist and revolutionary violent extremists, and
- any other entities that advocate politically motivated violence.
And this will make significant contributions to our collective capabilities to protect Australia and Australians.
Thank you.