00:01These official figures which were provided to the Royal Commission investigating the
00:06Bondi attack show that the share of resources devoted to counter-terrorism at Australia's
00:15spy agency ASIO and other intelligence organisations in Australia was lower than at any time after
00:23the September 11, 2001 attacks in the lead up to the Bondi massacre. Now, those figures
00:30are classified. They're a closely held national security secret. But we understand that the
00:39resourcing split shifted from about 70% devoted to counter-terrorism during the war on terror
00:48and the height of Islamic State over the 2010s, it's sometimes even more than that, down
00:53to about 30 to 40%, which is similar levels that you saw before September 11. Now, what
01:04does that mean? Well, ASIO has a finite amount of operational and analytical resources, people
01:13and technology, it can throw at investigating terrorism suspects and looking for terrorism
01:22threats. And that was well down before the Bondi attack. Now, we should say those figures don't
01:30include a really significant investigation that ASIO undertook last year into anti-Semitic
01:38attacks, which were found to have been carried out by Iran, targeting a Melbourne synagogue and
01:46a Bondi eatery. Now, those aren't included in the figures, those resources, because that
01:52came out of ASIO's foreign interference and espionage budget. Now, Mike Burgess, ASIO's chief,
02:03has really presided over a dramatic shift in resourcing and prioritisation at ASIO. When
02:12he came in, he saw a massive threat, massive and growing threat of espionage and interference
02:21from foreign states, particularly from China. And he declared that ASIO's top priority by 2022,
02:29the Royal Commission, which obtained these figures noted in its recent interim report, that there
02:35was a significant decline in the resourcing share for counter-terrorism from 2020 to 2025. But come
02:44August 2024, just over a year before the Bondi massacre, ASIO lifted the terrorism threat level to
02:55probable, assessing that an attack was more than 50% likely. Now, that's the same level as during the
03:02height of the ISIS caliphate. And last year, Mike Burgess, the ASIO chief warned about anti-Semitic murders,
03:11essentially, saying that anti-Semitism was his top priority in terms of threat to life.
03:17So, questions now about whether ASIO's actions and resourcing decisions matched those assessments
03:27of a probable terrorist attack and likely anti-Semitic killings.
03:32So, Sean, is this issue likely to be examined at the next block of public hearings at the Royal Commission?
03:39Oh, absolutely. That next phase of public hearings begins next week. We're expecting Mike Burgess,
03:49the ASIO chief, to appear at both public and closed hearings, because some of what they're looking at
03:55is classified. And the Royal Commissioner, Virginia Bell, in her interim report last month,
04:04said that among her key questions were whether ASIO and other agencies' responses to the
04:13deteriorating security environment post the October 7 attacks, the rising threat level,
04:19ongoing anti-Semitic violence, whether that was adequate. She asked whether ASIO and other agencies
04:26agencies understood and acted on their own threat assessments. The Commission's also examining whether
04:36there were intelligence gaps and failures around, specific to the Bondi attackers, their actions and
04:45movements in the lead up to the Bondi attack. We know they were assessed by ASIO back in 2019,
04:53because of associations with an IS terror cell, but found not to pose a threat. So, the Commission is
05:01also looking at whether that assessment was adequate, why they weren't reassessed later,
05:06why red flags didn't go up when they legally acquired firearms and travelled overseas, including
05:13to a former ISIS hotspot in the Philippines in the month before the Bondi attack.
05:19All of that, we now know, happened in an environment where terrorism resourcing,
05:28counter-terrorism resourcing, was at its lowest level since 9-11,
05:35not including that attack, that investigation into Iranian organised attacks, which did not look at
05:46supporters of Islamic State, which is the group that of course inspired the Bondi attack.
05:51As you know,
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