Tony Burke says country’s terror threat level system under review amid rise in extremism flagged by ASIO boss

Australia’s Home Affairs Minister has confirmed the country’s terror threat level system is under review after spy chief Mike Burgess argued it doesn’t capture the reality of growing threats.

ASIO’s Director-General used his annual threat assessment to highlight that while the nation’s terror threat level remains at “probable”, it “does not tell the full story”.

The threat level of “probable” deems that there’s a greater than 50 per cent chance of an onshore attack or attack planning in the next 12 months.

It was the same level Australia was under when 15 innocent people were murdered in a terrorist attack on Jewish event at Bondi Beach on December 14.

“The next level on the scale is expected, which applies when we have intelligence about a specific attack. We do not,” Mr Burgess said in his speech.

“But we do know the environment is degrading and acts of politically motivated violence are becoming more likely than ‘probable’ suggests.

“I do not believe the system was designed for a situation like the one we now face.

“Probable does not tell the full story.”

Mr Burgess told reporters on Wednesday evening that he was locked in conversations with Home Affairs secretary Stephanie Foster about the level system.

ASIO has foiled 14 major terror plots since the massacre at Bondi, with Mr Burgess saying he was “gravely concerned” about the temperature and trajectory of terrorism threats.

He said people were getting radicalised online more rapidly and ASIO were recording “increasingly embracing mixed ideologies”.

He also acknowledged rising anti-Semitism in Australia and said that “hatred of Jews is one thing virtually all the violent extremist cohorts have in common”.

Mr Burgess went on to list “neo-nazis”, Islamic extremism, “issue-motivated extremists”, “far-left activists”, “anarchists” and nation states like the Iranian regime and its IRGC military branch, which launched firebombing attacks against Australian synagogues.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke on Thursday acknowledged the “challenge” ASIO faced and vowed that the level system was “something that we’re looking at”.

“Once you’re at ‘probable’, the next official ratcheting up is ‘expected’, where you have a very specific event that you have had intelligence about that is about to occur,” Mr Burke told ABC radio.

“What Mike Burgess was making very clear last night is it has continued to increase the intensity of the threat level since we originally did the escalation to ‘probable’.”

He insisted that “within ‘probable’, there is a spectrum” — telling Parliament that “not to presume that because the threat alert level remains a ‘probable’ that we are at the same spot” as when it was first set.

Mr Burke insisted there was “a review that’s happening”, which he said was critical in the face of rising national security threats to ensure agencies and the public remain informed of the risks.

Shadow home affairs minister Jonno Duiam said the Liberal Party was open to working with the Albanese Government on “any amendments to the laws to strengthen our national security legislation” and “any counter-terror laws”.

“I think we should do everything we can to protect Australia,” he said.

“The government’s number one job — no matter whether they’re Liberal, Labor, whatever makeup they might be — should be to keep Australians safe.”

The Opposition leader claimed that there was a perception that security agencies “dropped the ball” before the Bondi attack.

Angus Taylor made the remarks on Thursday at a CEDA conference in Canberra when talking up his immigration policy, which he describes as one that should “discriminate heavily” based on values.

“The truth is the perception is that they have dropped the ball, and I think this has got to be fixed,” Mr Taylor said.

“There is a very strong sense, and I think it was particularly exacerbated, obviously, by what happened with Bondi in December last year, there’s a sense that the screening for this — given that one of those people is not a citizen — the screening for this is not happening, and that the intelligence and security agencies have dropped the ball on this.”