The Australian government on Monday raised its terrorist alert level due to the growing rise of extremist ideologies in the country in the context of the war in Gaza and other international conflicts.
Australia has upgraded its alert level from “possible” to “likely,” a level it maintained between 2014 and 2022, following a recommendation from intelligence services that “a more diverse range of extreme ideologies are being adopted” in the country.
“I want to reassure Australians that ‘likely’ does not mean inevitable and it does not mean that this is information about an imminent threat or danger,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said during a press conference.
The Labour leader, flanked by the head of intelligence and the attorney general, added that “governments around the world are concerned about the radicalisation of young people, radicalisation via the internet and the rise of new hybrid ideologies.”
For his part, the director of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), Mike Burgess, pointed out that since the COVID-19 pandemic there has been a trend towards increased political violence that makes the environment more volatile and unpredictable.
“There are increasingly more Australians willing to use violence to advance their cause. Politically motivated violence joins espionage and foreign interference as our top security concerns,” he said.
Burgess stressed that while the war in Gaza was not the “cause” of the increased level of terrorism, it had been a “significant driver” of the decision.
“The conflict (in Gaza) has fuelled grievances, promoted protests, undermined social cohesion and heightened intolerance,” he said at the same press conference.
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According to the ASIO director, Australian authorities have acted in eight incidents related to possible acts of terrorism in 2024, including the knife attack by a 16-year-old boy against a religious person in April in an Assyrian church in Sydney, which ended with no deaths.
None of these incidents have been linked to tensions in the Middle East, despite the increase in hate crimes against the Jewish and Muslim communities in the Oceanic country since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on towns in southern Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.
