ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess has vowed to continue to call out the “nationalist” and “racist” ideologies underpinning right-wing extremist threats.
Speaking during a Monday Senate estimates hearing, Mr Burgess said the spy agency would not shy away from identifying the specific threats at hand.
“We will call out through our umbrella terms and then more specific nationalist and racists ideologies and we will call them out when we see it,” he told the hearing.
“There is certainly no blindness or bias away from these ideologies, which we find abhorrent, totally inappropriate.”
It comes after ASIO announced it would no longer refer to “right-wing extremism” and “Islamic extremism”, saying the labels were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The top domestic spy agency has instead chosen to adopt the umbrella terms of “ideologically-motivated violent extremism” and “religiously-motivated violent extremism”.
Mr Burgess defended using the catch-all term ideological extremism to refer to terrorist organisations across the political spectrum.
"Some commentators suggested I had banned words and that's simply not true," Mr Burgess said.
"I will say 'extreme right-wing' where it's relevant. I will call out Islamic State where it's relevant."
Mr Burgess has described ideological extremist investigations as taking up 30 to 40 per cent of the agency’s counter-terrorism caseload.
His appearance before the hearing on Monday came the same day as
During his evidence, Mr Burgess made the point of directly describing the organisation as an “extreme right-wing group”.
“Senator If I may - just to be clear … this is an extreme right-wing group,” he said.
Mr Burgess said the domestic spy agency had proposed listing other ideologically motivated groups in addition to the Sonnenkrieg Division.
He also said other far-right extremist groups listed in the United Kingdom or in Canada had been identified as having a presence in Australia.
Critics question decision to lose right-wing extremism label
Some Labor and Greens MPs have questioned whether a resistance to directly identifying right-wing extremism could undermine the response to the threat.
In the estimates hearing, Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi raised these concerns asking Mr Burgess: “Why is the hard right not a specific threat?”
“It’s far more helpful to society to call it 'nationalistic' or 'racist' in terms of that helps people understand what we are dealing with here - not just simply a political spectrum assignment,” Mr Burgess replied.
Senator Faruqi also questioned Mr Burgess on why he told Guardian Australia in a recent podcast that there were “no direct lessons” for his organisation to learn from the far-right terrorist attack in Christchurch in 2019.
Australian Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi Source: AAP
She cited a recent New Zealand royal commission that noted the Christchurch terrorist, who is Australian, was active on far-right social media channels.
“I’m really disturbed that you can look at that report and say that there are no direct lessons for national security agencies in Australia,” she said.
“I actually did say there are no direct lessons for ASIO because the event didn’t occur here,” Mr Burgess responded.
“If you’re suggesting that we do not care about the threat, on behalf my organisation I do find that a little bit inappropriate and offensive. My staff work hard and they put their lives on the line to protect Australians.”
Mr Burgess said he agreed that the Christchurch terrorist was motivated by an extreme right-wing Islamophobic ideology.
