Australia’s spy boss, Mike Burgess, has confirmed that Iran is one of “at least three or four” countries involved in foreign interference in Australia’s diaspora communities.
Speaking on ABC’s Insiders on Sunday, the director general of security in charge of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation said he could think of “at least three or four [countries] that are we’ve actually actively found involved in foreign interference in Australia and diaspora communities”.
“Some of them would surprise you, and some of them are also our friends,” he said.
Foreign interference and espionage were key security concerns for the national intelligence and security agency, he said, with a range of countries, including Iran, caught attempting to threaten and intimidate diaspora communities.
Iran was able to be identified publicly because the federal minister had already done so, Burgess said.
This year the former cybersecurity minster Clare O’Neil revealed that Asio had disrupted the activities of individuals conducting surveillance in the home of an Iranian-Australian.
Asked on Sunday if the other countries should be identified, Anthony Albanese said: “No, in a word.
“Our priority here isn’t to get a headline. Our priority here is to keep Australians safe. First, second and third priority. Gold, silver and bronze, in the spirit of the Olympics.
“They are our priorities, and so we are careful about, I’m careful about, information that I give out being consistent with the advice that I receive from the agencies.”
The spy chief’s foreign interference remarks follow the Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign accusing the Iranian government of hacking its internal communications, though Reuters was yet to verify the identity and the motivation of the alleged hacker.
Burgess urged politicians and the media to be careful of their language after the decision to raise Australia’s terrorism threat level from “possible” to “probable”.
Burgess said today’s situation was a “completely different” scenario to 2014, when security agencies last raised the terror alert, and his key message was that there was a “broad range of ideologies” threatening Australia’s social fabric.
“Social economic grievances, conspiracy theories is up also in the mix along with traditionally religiously motivated [including] Islamist violent extremism and nationalism and racism,” he said.
Burgess also defended security checks on people who had fled Gaza and been granted visas to Australia, after opposition MPs raised concerns about the potential for security risks.
“There are processes in place and I can assure your audience that when things get referred to Asio we deal with them effectively,” he told the ABC on Sunday.
“Of course there might be times when they didn’t get referred to us in time. Once we become aware of them, we’re able to do the assessments and deal with them effectively.”
The Asio boss said security agencies “took each case on its merits” and, if a person applying for a visa didn’t “have an ideology or support for violent extremism ideology, then that’s not a problem. If they have a support for that ideology, that will be a problem.”
He reiterated that all public figures needed to watch their language.
“The most likely terrorist attack in this country now is an individual which will go to violence with little or no warning and actually little to no planning,” he said.
“It could be a reaction to language they have heard used from someone including a politician.”
Burgess said young people were more vulnerable to being recruited and, of the eight instances of terror-related investigations police and security agencies had carried out since April, five involved minors, with the youngest just 14.
“It’s something we have to focus on there across society – mums, dads, community leaders, state governments, the federal government – we got to press into that,” Burgess said.
He said he believed the same “drivers” that led to the far-right riots in the UK were present in Australia, though not at the same scale. While social media had its benefits, it also made the job of security agencies more difficult.
“The trouble with the internet is it’s the greatest incubator of violent extremism and social media and the downside is the greatest accelerator of violent extremism,” he said.
– with Australian Associated Press
