CANBERRA, June 25 (Xinhua) -- The head of Australia's intelligence agency said on Wednesday that the terrorism threat level system was not designed for the current situation, where the country faces an "unprecedented" number of threats.
Delivering his annual threat assessment speech in Canberra, Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) Director-General Mike Burgess revealed that the agency has foiled 31 major terrorism plots since 2014, saving "many lives."
He said that Australia's national terrorism threat level remains at probable, where it was set in August 2024, but that it is "too simplistic" to assume that there is a single terrorism threat or a most likely terrorist threat, warning that the country is facing an unprecedented number of threats that must be confronted.
"The next level on the scale is 'expected', which applies when we have intelligence about a specific attack. We do not. But we do know the environment is degrading and acts of politically motivated violence are becoming more likely than 'probable' suggests," Burgess said.
The speech was Burgess's first annual threat assessment since 15 people were killed in a terror attack that targeted a Jewish event at Sydney's Bondi Beach in December.
The ASIO director-general said that counter-terrorism resourcing increased when the threat level was raised in 2024 and continued to grow in the months before the Bondi attack.
However, he said that in the new terrorism environment, even a "vast army" of counter-terrorism officers may not be sufficient to find an individual who has been radicalized online.
"Instead of spending time and resources planning sophisticated attacks, radicalized individuals are moving to low-capability attacks with little or no warning," Burgess said.
In addition to the 31 major plots foiled since 2014, he said that ASIO has resolved "scores" of less advanced terror-related cases in the same period, including 14 since the Bondi attack. ■