ASIO foils foreign spy plot to commit murder in Australia
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The news: ASIO foiled a plot by a foreign intelligence agency to murder an individual on Australian soil within the last year, Director-General Mike Burgess has revealed.
The context: Delivering his annual national threat assessment on Wednesday evening, Burgess declared Australia has “never faced so many different threats at scale”, ranging from foreign interference to youth radicalisation.
In a sober speech to reporters in Canberra, Burgess warned there was “no single threat” being managed by ASIO as the threat landscape becomes more complex and intertwined.
In one case, a foreign intelligence agency was in the early stages of planning the murder of an individual – or individuals – before ASIO intervened.
“The governments and intelligence services involved are in no doubt about how utterly unacceptable their behaviour is, and how we will deal with their agents,” Burgess said.
Two of Australia’s closest partners, the US and Canada, have publicly accused Indian Government officials of ordering murders on their soil. While Burgess did not reference those allegations specifically, he did refer to “close allies” dealing with state-sponsored murder and murder attempts, describing their evidence as “compelling”.
Burgess has previously disclosed an attempt by a foreign government to lure an Australian-based dissident overseas to kill them, though has not previously disclosed a plot to commit violence on Australian soil.
Foreign powers, including some Australia would consider friends, were also "relentlessly seeking information” on its military capabilities and may seek to undermine community support for AUKUS, Burgess warned. That could develop into outright sabotage of Australia’s infrastructure to impede its war-fighting capabilities if regional tensions escalate.
The ASIO director-general also said that social cohesion was fraying, trust in institutions was continuing to decline and truth itself was being undermined by the advent of mis- and disinformation.
As has been the case for years, ASIO views the most likely source of violence to be a ‘lone actor’ often at the periphery of more organised extremist movements, and often rapidly self-radicalised.
The motivation for extremist violence was also becoming more complicated, with an increasing number of extremists motivated by “hybrid” and at times contradictory ideology.
“Extremists are self-radicalising – ‘choosing their own adventure’ – and often their own unique, blended belief system,” Burgess said.
While religiously-motivated violence, mainly Sunni extremist violence, had previously been the largest source of domestic terrorism, that was no longer the case. This year, Burgess said more than half of potential terrorist matters in Australia involved “mixed ideologies or nationalist and racist ideologies.”
Extremists motivated to violence were becoming younger, with ASIO aware of one 12-year-old wanting to blow up a place of worship.
Burgess also fears that a spate of recent antisemitic attacks “have not yet plateaued” as tensions over the Middle East conflict played out in Australia.
What they said: “I think it’s fair to say it’s the most significant, serious and sober address so far. It is a frank, uncomfortable assessment … Australia has never faced so many different threats at scale at once,” Burgess said.
The source: Mike Burgess’ annual threat assessment
