The nation’s top spy chief Mike Burgess has said there is a “realistic possibility” three foreign governments would attempt to conduct assassinations in Australia in a speech on Tuesday evening.
Delivering the 2025 Lowy Lecture, Mr Burgess said Australia has never faced “so many different threats” at once and stressed that social cohesion was “under siege” and “under attack”.
“The conflict in the Middle East … reshaped Australia’s security environment from afar. While the conflict did not directly inspire terrorism here, it prompted protest exacerbated tension, undermined social cohesion and elevated intolerance,” Mr Burgess said.
“Inflammatory rhetoric and provocative, disruptive actions have been normalised, and I fear the normalisation of violence and hatred against one community created a permissive environment for similar behaviours in other communities.”
Mr Burgess referenced Hizb ut-Tahrir, an international pan-Islamist and Islamic fundamentalist political organisation, as a key example of a group sowing antisemitic sentiments in a subtle yet malicious manner in Australia.
“The organisation’s condemnation of Israel and Jews attracts media attention and aids recruitment, but it deliberately stops short of promoting onshore acts of politically motivated violence,” he said.
“Hizb ut Tahrir wants to test and stretch the boundaries of legality without breaking them. I fear its anti-Israel rhetoric is fuelling and normalising wider antisemitic narratives.”
Mr Burgess said deteriorating social cohesion was rapidly amplifying security threats, and acts of politically motivated violence in Australia are “more likely” due to the conflict in Gaza.
He warned that his agency expected “ongoing tests for our social cohesion” even if the ceasefire held and that many of the aggrieved considered violence a “legitimate way to effect political or societal change”.
“The trend increased during COVID, gained further momentum after the terrorist attacks on Israel, and accelerated during Israel’s military response,” Mr Burgess said.
The ASIO director-general said the number of extremist groups and foreign regimes opportunistically undermining Australia had climbed to unprecedented heights and that “cunning nation states” were deliberately trying to set social fabric alight.
He then delivered a grim warning that ASIO believed “at least three” foreign countries were “willing and capable” of attempting assassinations on Australian soil.
“Given the degrading trajectory of our security environment and the growing willingness of regimes to conduct high-harm operations, ASIO assesses there is a realistic possibility a foreign government will attempt to assassinate a perceived dissident in Australia,” he said
“We believe there are at least three nations willing and capable of conducting lethal targeting here. It is entirely possible the regimes would try to hide their involvement by hiring criminal cut outs, as Iran did when directing its arson attacks.”
In August Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed that Iran had directed at least two antisemitic attacks on Australia’s shores, with Mr Burgess sating that the Iranian regime had used a “complex web of cut outs” to conceal its involvement and that the perpetrators were unaware of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps involvement.
“This threat is real,” Mr Burgess said.
He also disclosed on Tuesday a startling example of his agency intercepting a plot by a “foreign intelligence service that keeps ASIO very busy” to convince Australians to sell information about the AUKUS security pact and critical minerals.
“One of its teams tried to cultivate and recruit several Australians and believed it had convinced them to betray their country,” he said.
He said the foreign intelligence service arranged for an Australian to travel by plane and then boat to a third country for a face-to-face meeting and that the spies were planning on handing over a list of their intelligence requirements.
Mr Burgess said “inside information on Australia’s economy, critical minerals and AUKUS” were high on the list.
However, he stated that ASIO was tracking and manipulating the foreign agency’s “entire activity”.
“We worked with a partner in the third country to deliver an unwelcome surprise. When the intelligence officers arrived at the location, they were not met by their target, they were met by an ASIO officer. The conversation was brief but pointed,” he said.
“We told them Australians were off limits. We warned them we would disrupt their operations whenever and wherever we chose and we sent our regards to the head of their service.”
In concluding his address Mr Burgess said the result of the compounding dynamics was a domestic and international security environment with an “unprecedented number of challenges”, and an “unprecedented cumulative level of potential harm”.