We need a spy A-team on boats, immigration, terror

Peter Dutton claims a politician traitor is a former NSW Labor MP.

ASIO boss Mike Burgess deployed a measure of stagecraft of his own when he blew the whistle on the “A-team” spies who had compromised the nation’s security interests. According to Australia’s top spook, a former politician was cultivated by a group who considered targeting a family member of a prime minister. The disclosure, made in ASIO’s annual threat assessment report, made a splash. But it was short on detail. The who, what, when and how needed to fully assess what the disclosure actually meant was missing. It nonetheless cast a pall over all former politicians, on both sides, and raised the interest and concern of our major security partners around the world. It also managed to overshadow the very real and present danger posed by radical elements linked to events unfolding in the Middle East and what ASIO is doing about it. Mr Burgess said Sunni Islamic violent extremism poses the “greatest religiously motivated threat in Australia”. He acknowledged a “realistic possibility of a terrorist attack or attack planning in the next 12 months”, and expressed concern about the rise of nationalist extremists, including some seeking a race war.

ASIO fears the potential of lone-wolf attacks and has been on high alert since the Hamas-led massacre on October 7 last year in Israel and subsequent Iran-backed attacks in the Middle East. The ASIO revelations add to security concerns including new crimes by some of the 149 foreign detainees released in the wake of last year’s NZYQ High Court ruling. The immediate political danger for Anthony Albanese is that security issues will impact voting in Saturday’s Dunkley by-election, which is currently held by Labor with a 6 per cent margin. Administrative incompetence in immigration can be added to other concerns, including a lack of integrity on the stage three tax cut promise and a failure to deliver promised cheaper power prices, which is seen as a proxy for cost-of-living pressures more generally.

Mr Burgess’s failure to provide details of the spy ring has led to finger-pointing at a raft of former potential candidates. Two ex-NSW Labor politicians – Sam Dastyari and Ernest Wong – said they were not the MP who had “sold out their country, party and former colleagues to advance the interests of the foreign regime”. Alex Turnbull, the son of former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, outed himself as potentially being the person referred to by Mr Burgess, but this was not confirmed by ASIO. Peter Dutton is correct to say that not naming the individual has put a cloud over all former politicians. Joe Hockey said the revelations had already raised questions in Washington and for our Five Eyes security partners. According to Mr Burgess, the spies pose as consultants, headhunters, local government officials, academics and think tank researchers, claiming to be from fictional companies. They offer payments for “inside or exclusive information”, and promise potential recruits “consulting opportunities, promising to pay thousands of dollars for reports on trade, politics, economics, foreign policy, defence and security”.

Tantalising as the A-team bombshell may be, the un-detailed revelations are from several years ago. A more immediate concern for security agencies must be a potential resurgence in boat arrivals facilitated by people-smugglers who have managed to deliver asylum-seekers to the remote Western Australian coast and escape undetected.

Better intelligence and surveillance may also have helped avoid the painful reality that criminals released from detention following last year’s High Court ruling had been free to terrorise and reoffend.

The outbreak of anti-Semitism following the October 7 atrocities in Israel and the Gaza ground offensive must be the top priority. The potential for Islamic terror is hiding in plain sight and we must trust that ASIO is sufficiently focused to stop it from getting out of hand.