delivered 4
November 2025, Sydney Town Hall, Sydney, Australia
[NOT AR AUTHENTICATED -- CHECK AGAINST
DELIVERY. SEE ALSO PAGE BOTTOM FOR A PSA ON THE USE OF THE TERM "RHETORIC"]
Thank you, Michael. Former Prime Minister, John
Howard, Steven Lowy and the members of the Lowy Board, Your Excellencies and
distinguished guests.
One of our distinguished guests this evening is about to change jobs and two of
them are newly minted.
First, I’d like to acknowledge Andrew Shearer, Director-General of National
Intelligence. Andrew I’d like to acknowledge your service, your support and your
friendship. I wish you all the very best for what comes in the future as our
ambassador to Japan.
I’d also like to acknowledge my colleague Krissy Barrett, the newly minted
Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police. Krissy congratulations on your
appointment.
And equally newly minted on the same day I understand, the Commissioner of New
South Wales Police, Mal Lanyon, congratulations on your appointment.
And I’d like to take this opportunity to acknowledge all law enforcement
officers both in the room this evening, across the country and across the globe
for the work that you do in keeping our community safe.
And finally, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the staff of my
organization.
First, my declared deputies, so I can say who they are -- Mike, Lisa and Gus --
they are allowed to wave and identify themselves.
Of course there are others in the room that can’t identify themselves, and there
are others across the country and across the globe right now, who are working
hard to protect Australia and Australians from threats to security.
It is my privilege and great honor to work with you all, so thank you.
It is a great honor to be asked to deliver the 2025 Lowy Lecture.
He grew up amid the ruins of Europe, but built an empire in Australia and
founded the Lowy Institute, a factory of ideas.
He escaped hate and darkness, choosing to channel his success into
enlightenment.
While I would never compare myself to Frank, I’m also an immigrant to this
country.
I will never forget arriving in Adelaide as a seven-year-old.
Traveling from a dark, damp London, stepping off the plane into an Australian
summer felt like going from a black and white movie into a color one.
The vivid blue sky and vibrant colors of the city of Adelaide radiated
opportunity and possibility.
I think it says a lot about Australia that a survivor of the Holocaust can
become one of our most successful business leaders and greatest philanthropists,
while the son of
ten-pound poms can become the
Director-General of Security.
This gives me a particular interest in social harmony -- something Frank Lowy
himself identified as one of Australia’s richest blessings when he delivered
this lecture in 2018.
Community cohesion remains a great blessing seven years later.
But it is under siege, under threat, under attack.
Our social fabric is fraying -- fraying in ways we have never experienced
before.
This is not an accident.
Tonight, I will explore how security threats are damaging our cohesion, and how
our damaged cohesion is amplifying security threats.
Given this is the Lowy Lecture, I’ll start with the international dynamics.
International Nexus
ASIO [Australian Security Intelligence
Organisation] is sometimes called Australia’s domestic spy agency. This is not
accurate. Our mission is to protect Australians from security threats wherever
they are -- at home and abroad.
We have offices in multiple countries and working relationships with literally
hundreds of intelligence and security agencies -- some you would expect, some
you would find more surprising.
Our officers routinely conduct operations offshore to defend Australia’s
interests.
A recent example involved a foreign intelligence service that keeps ASIO very
busy, despite claiming it does not spy on Australia.
One of its teams tried to cultivate and recruit several Australians, and
believed it had convinced them to betray their country.
Reflecting ASIO’s success in making Australia an unwelcome environment for
espionage, 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.
The spies wanted to hand over a list of their intelligence requirements -- the
people and things they wanted spied on.
Inside information on Australia’s economy, critical minerals and AUKUS
were high on the list.
Little did they know ASIO was tracking and manipulating their 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.
• 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.
Spies are meant to report any interaction with counterparts from another
country. I’m pleased to note these intelligence officers followed the rules and
owned up to their superiors that their cover and their operation were blown!
An international perspective is more important than ever because, in a
hyper-connected world, almost every domestic security threat involves an
overseas nexus.
Australia is an island, but we are not isolated.
The tyranny of distance does not make tyranny distant.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine prompted a more
aggressive and reckless Russian intelligence apparatus to target Ukraine’s
supporters around the world, including Australia.
Russia has always been a significant espionage threat -- Ben
Chifley founded ASIO to counter it -- but the ongoing war with
Ukraine added urgency to its intelligence gathering.
Last year, two Russian-born Australian citizens were
arrested and charged with an
espionage-related offence.
Russia’s brazen acts of sabotage in Europe demonstrated its willingness to use a
wider range of tools and tactics to coerce, intimidate and damage perceived
adversaries, and we should not assume Australia is immune.
Nor can we blithely hope the parts of its intelligence apparatus that specialize
in sowing division and spreading disinformation will ignore us.
I’ll return to this form of Russian foreign interference soon.
The conflict in the Middle East also 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.
This, in turn, made acts of politically motivated violence more likely.
Even if the ceasefire holds, we expect ongoing tests for our social cohesion.
Inflammatory rhetoric and provocative, disruptive actions have been normalized,
and I fear the normalization of violence and hatred against one community
created a permissive environment for similar behaviors in other communities.
Great power competition in our region is contributing to multiple territorial
disputes including in the South China Sea, Kashmir, the Taiwan Strait and the
Korean peninsula, while also driving a relentless hunger for strategic advantage
and an insatiable appetite for inside information.
This is why, based on what ASIO is seeing, more Australians are being targeted
for espionage and foreign interference than ever before.
At the same time, all three of these international drivers are being accelerated
by rapid advances in technology.
In terms of social cohesion, the internet is the greatest incubator of grievance
narratives and conspiracy theories.
It’s an echo chamber for disaffection, misinformation and reinforcement.
While the internet incubates, social media accelerates.
If you engage with hard-line but non-violent religious content on one of the
most popular platforms, its algorithms will serve up more and more extreme
material until, after just a few clicks, you can be watching grotesque ISIS
propaganda.
And while the internet incubates and social media accelerates, artificial
intelligence exacerbates.
You will not be surprised to know I am deeply concerned about the potential for
AI to take online radicalization and disinformation to entirely new levels.
The result of these compounding dynamics is a domestic security environment with
an unprecedented number of challenges, and an unprecedented cumulative level of
potential harm.
Australia has never faced so many different threats -- at scale, at once.
These dynamics are putting unprecedented strain on our social fabric -- the
fabric Frank Lowy helped weave and preserve.
Fractured community cohesion is not one of the specific matters ASIO is
empowered to investigate and assess, but it is directly linked to our three most
pressing security concerns: espionage, foreign interference and politically
motivated violence.
It aggravates them, and as I will explain tonight, they aggravate it.
But what we are seeing today is on a different scale, with different dynamics.
Grievance is growing. Intolerance is rising.
Inflammatory rhetoric and behavior is being normalized.
Anti-authority beliefs are spreading.
There are multiple, cascading and intersecting threats to our social cohesion,
fuelled by three distinct but connected cohorts:
• the aggrieved,
• the opportunistic, and
• the cunning.
The aggrieved are the individuals who tear at our social fabric.
The opportunistic are the organized groups that take advantage of weaknesses in
our social fabric.
The cunning are the nation states that play a longer, more calculated game to
divide and distract us.
Let’s start with the aggrieved.
The Aggrieved
Political differences, political debates and political protests are essential
parts of a healthy democracy.
Unfortunately, here and overseas, levels of personal grievance and frustration
are growing.
Rightly or wrongly some Australians feel dispossessed, disaffected,
disenfranchised. There are spikes in polarization and intolerance.
Many of the foundations that have underpinned Australia’s security, prosperity
and democracy are being tested:
• Social cohesion is eroding,
• Trust in institutions is declining, and
• Even truth itself is being undermined by conspiracy, mis- and disinformation.
Similar trends are playing out across the Western world.
Angry, alienated individuals are embracing anti-authority ideologies and
conspiracy theories; engaging in uncivil debate and unpeaceful protest.
Some are combining multiple beliefs to create new hybrid ideologies.
It is important to understand there is significant diversity in this cohort;
suggesting all the aggrieved are "sovereign
citizens," for example, is neither accurate nor helpful.
While sovereign citizens consider the government illegitimate and therefore
without authority, other aggrieved activists believe the opposite -- the
government possesses too much authority.
Many of the aggrieved do not necessarily espouse violent views, but may still
see violence as a legitimate way to effect political or societal change.
These dynamics raised the temperature of the security environment, made acts of
violence more likely, and continue to undermine social cohesion.
The Opportunistic
Next, the opportunistic.
Extremist organizations -- whether religiously or ideologically motivated -- are
adaptive and patient.
They are skilled at exploiting gaps or fissures in social cohesion; at
harnessing and harvesting grievances.
The way nationalist and racist violent extremists attempted to leverage the
so-called March for Australia rallies is a case in point.
The biggest neo-Nazi group, the
National Socialist Network -- or White
Australia as it is rebranding itself -- identified the demonstrations as a
vehicle to raise its profile.
It strategically and opportunistically exploited the organizers’ complaints
about immigration and the cost of living.
This is a key part of the Network’s broader strategy to "mainstream’" and expand
its movement by focusing on issues with broader appeal.
Modern neo-Nazis crave attention and publicity. It gives them credibility and
helps with recruitment.
They see journalists as “useful idiots” in this regard, and they celebrate even
the most critical coverage because it inevitably leads to a surge in membership
applications.
After one recent story, members joked about thanking the media for the “free
promotion."
At the same time, though, its ideology and its provocative, offensive and
high-profile actions are antithetical to social cohesion.
At its core, the National Socialist Network is anti-immigrant, anti-Indigenous,
anti-gay, anti-Jew, anti-Islam and anti-anything that does not fit its white
Anglo-centric world view.
It’s version of social cohesion is monochrome and mono-cultural.
Even if the organization does not engage in terrorism, I remain deeply concerned
by its hateful, divisive rhetoric and increasingly violent propaganda, and the
growing likelihood these things will prompt spontaneous violence, particularly
in response to perceived provocation.
While nationalist and racist violent extremists make up the significant majority
of our investigations into ideologically motivated extremism, events in the
Middle East triggered a troubling increase in anarchist and revolutionary
extremism, which is also straining cohesion.
Since October 2023, we’ve seen more provocative protests and a notable uptick in
intentionally disruptive and damaging tactics by anti-Israel activists,
including multiple acts of arson, vandalism and violent protest against defense
companies accused of supplying weapon components.
These groups -- for want of a better word -- are not as centrally controlled,
uniformly motivated or as disciplined as the National Socialist Network, but
they contain individuals who are increasingly willing to embrace or threaten
violence to achieve their goals.
Directly or indirectly, their actions can marginalize, stigmatize and frighten
sections of the community.
The group involved in at least one incident produced a
video threatening “consequences” for the
employees of the business.
“Every worker in this supply chain is complicit,” the video stated. “We will
decide your fate as you have decided the fate of millions… We have been closely
watching you. We have your addresses. Stop arming “israel” or else...."
Ideologically motivated groups are not the only opportunists threatening
community cohesion.
While an entity such as
Hizb ut Tahrir is religiously motivated, its provocative
behavior, offensive rhetoric and insidious strategy are very similar to the
tactics of the National Socialist Network.
The organization'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.
Hizb ut Tahrir wants to test and stretch the boundaries of legality without
breaking them.
As with the neo-Nazis, this does not make its behavior acceptable.
I fear its anti-Israel rhetoric is fuelling and normalizing wider anti-Semitic
narratives.
While I do not want to overstate the threat from opportunists such as the three
I’ve highlighted -- let alone give them free publicity -- they are further
examples of the multi-directional and multi-dimensional challenge for
Australia’s community fabric.
The Cunning
This brings me to the final cohort, the cunning. Of the three, the cunning is
the most concerning.
Aggrieved individuals clawing at our social fabric is one thing. Extremist
groups opportunistically undermining it is another.
But cunning nation states deliberately trying to set the fabric alight and fan
the flames is something else again in terms of threat.
Regimes are operating in a security "grey zone"… using non-traditional tools to
interfere in decision-making, promote discord, amplify distrust and spread false
narratives in Western democracies.
This is a newer and more disturbing dynamic, and why I say the threats facing
our social cohesion are unprecedented.
Authoritarian regimes demonstrate a chilling willingness to exploit fault lines
in countries they consider hostile.
In January this year, Frank Lowy posed a question that I noted with great
interest:
Could -- and I’ll quote Frank directly -- “dark forces financed by international
hatred” be behind Australia’s spate of anti-Semitic incidents?
In August, the Prime Minister revealed our assessment that Iran directed at
least two of the attacks on Jewish interests.
The Iranian regime used a complex web of cut-outs to hide its involvement. While
the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, provided instructions on the
entities to target and its preferred methodology -- arson -- it is unlikely the
individuals at the end of the chain -- those literally lighting the fires --
knew about the IRGC’s involvement.
It is important to understand that Iran did not single Australia out; the summer
of anti-Semitism was part of its global effort to ferment hatred of the Jewish
community and fan the flames of division.
This activity is perhaps the most egregious example of a nation state trying to
unpick our social fabric, but not the only example.
In our region, ASIO is tracking the spread of a particular strain of extremist
propaganda. While the material purports to be from a transnational terrorist
group, ASIO and our international partners suspect it is fake, and is actually
being created and disseminated by a hostile nation state.
The propaganda glorifies violent extremism and advocates attacks on specific
targets, presumably to encourage violence, alarm communities, incite
sectarianism and destabilize regional governments.
In Europe, Russian cyber operatives connected to intelligence services have
inflamed community tensions by spreading false news and promoting violent
narratives, particularly on the topic of immigration.
Australia is not immune.
Russian operatives are covertly stoking and amplifying division here, too,
although with far less success.
We recently uncovered links between pro-Russian influencers in Australia and an
offshore media organization that almost certainly receives direction from
Russian intelligence.
The Australians publish and push extreme online narratives justifying the
invasion of Ukraine and condemning Australia’s support for Kiev.
Deliberately hiding their connection to Moscow -- and the likely instruction
from Moscow -- the propagandists try to hijack and inflame legitimate debate.
They use social media to spread vitriolic, polarizing commentary on
anti-immigration protests and pro-Palestinian marches.
ASIO’s investigation is ongoing.
We will ask our partners to determine if any laws are being broken, because this
behavior is unacceptable.
These state-sanctioned trolls are more than propaganda puppets; they want to
turn hot-button issues into burning issues, tipping disagreement into division
and division into violence.
Fortunately, Australia is resistant and resilient, and their efforts are
achieving limited traction -- although this in no way excuses their behavior.
My greatest concern with these authoritarian tactics is that regimes are
increasingly reckless, seemingly unconcerned that arson could claim innocent
lives or fake terrorist propaganda could inspire an actual attack or online
vitriol could prompt violent protest.
The step from a reckless act to a high-harm act is a small one.
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. This threat is real.
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.
Please note I said, “attempt to assassinate.”
ASIO and our law enforcement partners are acutely alive to this threat and are
working around the clock, using all our powers, to protect Australia and
Australians.
Our Response
In the security environment I’ve laid out this evening, national security truly
is national security -- everybody’s business.
ASIO and law enforcement are part of the solution, but not the full solution.
You cannot spy your way to greater cohesion or arrest your way to fewer
grievances.
It requires a whole of community, whole of society response.
I mean that literally.
Every one of us has a role to play protecting our social cohesion. Our words
matter, our decisions matter, our actions matter.
In an age with unprecedented avenues for communication, I fear we are losing our
ability to converse.
Or at least losing the ability to converse with civility, debate with respect,
disagree with restraint.
To have an exchange of ideas rather than an exchange of diatribes or slogans or
rhetorical blows.
To be right without being righteous.
To compromise.
Yes, the aggrieved, the opportunistic and the cunning are ripping our social
fabric. But in most cases, they are exploiting and amplifying existing discord.
Anti-Semitism existed in Australia before Iran directed its arson attacks. And
while Iran is responsible for at least two of the incidents, it is not
responsible for every incident.
Yes, social media algorithms are accelerating extremism and radicalization, but
the algorithms do not operate in isolation.
People choose to create the content; people choose to engage with the content
and people choose to act on the content.
I worry we risk creating real world "aggro-rithms"
[or AI social media algorithms] where grievance, intolerance, polarization and
rhetoric feed on themselves…
Inflaming grievance, intolerance, polarization and rhetoric, increasing the
potential for violence.
Sociologists will be better placed to ponder what’s driving these dynamics than
a spy chief; my concern is… a more vulnerable, fractured and intolerant society
means a less predictable and increasingly volatile security environment.
Conclusion
Despite the scale of these challenges, Australia is better placed than many
other Western democracies to meet them.
Our Parliaments are sovereign, our communities are resilient, our economy is
growing. These attributes, along with others such as compulsory voting and a
social safety net, are critical stabilizers and insulators.
While the threats and challenges facing us are significant, they are not
insurmountable.
Even the most cunning foreign intelligence service is not invincible.
A national terrorism threat level of PROBABLE does not mean inevitable.
We should not be defeatist or insecure about our security.
We can and should have confidence in our ability to respond.
Every one of the plots I described tonight was stopped, disrupted or pieced
together by ASIO and our partners.
We do not need to be security alarmed, but we do need to be security aware --
security sensible -- and consider the consequences of our words and actions.
Your business might not be in national security but that doesn’t mean national
security is not your business.
Thank you.
1
PSA for the term RHETORIC: This address may well hold a record for
delivering the most one-sided contextualization of the term RHETORIC yet
seen on this site. In order of appearance, deployments of term rhetoric
or rhetorical include "Inflammatory rhetoric" (twice), "divisive
rhetoric," "offensive rhetoric," "anti-Israel rhetoric," "rhetorical
blows," "grievance, intolerance, polarization and rhetoric feed on
themselves." On the other hand, the term rhetoric is used not once in a
positive or even-handed light. And while rhetoric has indeed been
rightly and roundly castigated for
its misuse, fair-minded speakers and auditors alike would do well to be
reminded of more considered and well-rounded views on the term at:
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/rhetoricdefinitions.htm
Original Text Source: asio.gov.au
Text Changes: Spilling and
punctuation modified to reflect standard American English practice
Page Created: 11/11/25
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