ASIO boss’s call for calm risks stirring the political pot

Liberal leader Peter Dutton and director-general of the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation Mike Burgess. Picture: AAP

ASIO has made an extraordinary intervention into what is an extraordinary situation evolving in Australia.

On the surface, it reflects concerns that another tipping point in the nation’s social cohesion may be approaching.

While it is rare for a director-general of security to so overtly step into the political arena, Mike Burgess clearly feels that he has been forced to do so.

Presumably, the intelligence agency is picking up some disturbing chatter.

The risk from the intelligence agency’s point of view is for the raw emotions of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel now playing out domestically to spark spontaneous acts of violence.

An obvious consequence is the potential beyond a random conflagration for an angrier and more divided community, laying fertile ground for more organised expressions of hatred.

The key concern for the agency is the general security environment becomes more complicated and volatile.

It has happened before – from the Cronulla riots to actual acts of terrorism.

Burgess’s intervention, however, has had immediate repercussions.

While he is concerned about the security environment, he has inadvertently added to a volatile political environment.

Burgess said “all parties” needed to consider the implications for social cohesion when speaking publicly.

“As I have said previously, words matter. ASIO has seen direct connections between inflamed language and inflamed community tensions,” he said.

Some may argue that it is not ASIO’s role to be venturing into this debate publicly. And there are valid reasons why.

The Albanese government has been quick to seize on Burgess’s warning, backgrounding media that the spy boss’s comments directly contradicted Peter Dutton’s calls for non-citizen hate-preachers to be deported.

Burgess has now found himself being verballed by the government when his aim was to point out the escalating implications for the more obvious forms of inflammatory language.

What is patently evident from Burgess’s statement is that he was responding to the anti-Semitic chants at the Sydney Opera House on Monday amid concerns of more protests to come. “As always, ASIO is not interested in those who are engaged in lawful protest, but rather the small subset of protesters who may wish to escalate protest to violence. This includes religiously motivated and ideologically motivated extremists, or anyone who believes that violence is a means to further their own interests.”

Dutton, as all politicians, needs to be careful. But there is nothing the Opposition Leader has said so far that ASIO could consider was socially divisive.

When you have protesters chanting “gas the Jews”, you know you have a serious problem from a security perspective.

It is unsurprising that Labor would seek to politically exploit Burgess’s comments when it has come under criticism for its own response to the tragedy.

The Prime Minister also knows that he will have to deal with inevitable outbreaks over the party’s own internal divisions when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.