ASIO director-general Mike Burgess says mixed ideologies promoting violence behind rise in terror threat level

ASIO director-general Mike Burgess says Australia’s terror-level threat has been raised to “probable” due to a rising mix of ideologies where people think “violence is permissible”.

Mr Burgess had earlier on Monday joined Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus in making the announcement, where he said eight incidents had been disrupted in the past four months.

The raising of the threat level does not mean ASIO has intelligence about plans of an imminent attack.

Speaking to 7.30, Mr Burgess said not one of the eight incidents caused the raising of the threat level, but rather it was concerns about the number of motivations involved, and that those involved were not known to authorities. 

“One incident or a couple of incidents are not a reason to raise the threat level, but they are an indication of what we’re seeing in society across those eight incidents,” Mr Burgess said.

“Five of them involved minors or youth. The oldest was 21. The youngest was 14. 

“Across the eight there’s an equal mix of religiously motivated, nationalist and racist violent extremism.”

Mr Albanese earlier said the raised level had been driven by increases in youth radicalisation, online radicalisation and the rise of “new mixed ideologies”.

Mr Burgess said mixed ideologies lacked logic but were often based on violence.

Asked if the eight incidents he referred to were mostly religiously motivated, Mr Burgess said the total number was less than half.

He said he was more concerned by people becoming attracted to violent elements of ideologies that did not make sense.

“[In] one particular incident, we have an individual that’s latched onto ANTIFA, so extreme left wing, but actually in the manifesto, there’s neo-Nazis … that defies logic,” he said. 

Mr Burgess then added that those incidents — which all came after the Wakeley stabbing, where the perpetrator was charged with a terror offence — involved people who were unknown to police and been prepared to act quickly.

“This is the new thing, people will go to violence with little or no warning, and they [have] little or no planning in some of these that I’ve talked about,” he said.

Young Australians are vulnerable

Mr Burgess said young Australians in particular were being targeted, especially online.