Australia’s top spy boss has told a Senate committee that children as young as 12 are being indoctrinated and recruited by neo-Nazi and extremists online, who are becoming more adept at dodging bans and moderation on social media platforms.

Mike Burgess, the director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), said that he believes the internet is “the single most potent and powerful incubator of extremism”.

“It functions as a force multiplier for extremism, a fertile ground to share ideology and spreading propaganda,” he said.

“ASIO is investigating one network that uses encrypted chat platforms to communicate with offshore extremists, sharing vile propaganda, posting weapon tips and discussing how to provoke a race war.”

He said ASIO has made “little progress” in convincing tech and social media companies to assist law enforcement in cracking encrypted messages.

“In the case of people we have identified through other means, who are members of that group I talked about, we do have legal grounds to justify getting access to that because what we know of what some of them are sharing. These are violent extremists who will likely kill someone,” Burgess said.

“We will discover that we were unable to get in there and get the intelligence that allows police to save lives. That is going to be a hard day. I don’t think that day is far away.”

He said that the rhetoric of Australia’s politicians has the potential to amplify extremist messages, regardless of intent, and ASIO is paying attention to it.

Radicalisation

Burgess discussed how some teenagers are hanging Nazi flags and photos of the Christchurch killer on their walls and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) highlighted that children as young as 12 are being radicalised.

Alison Wegg, the AFP’s acting deputy commissioner for terrorism, said the AFP has conducted “operational activity” against 27 individuals who were 17 or younger.

“60 per cent were charged with Commonwealth or state-based offences, including but not limited to advocating terrorism, possessing or distributing extremist material, acts in preparation of a terrorist offence, committing a terrorist act and membership of a terrorist organisation, and including drug-related offences, firearm-related offences, possession of child abuse material and possess, supply or making of explosives,” she said.

“The AFP prioritises early invention in these cases and disruption strategies for young people ahead of prosecution, particularly where there is no threat to community.”

Focus on platforms

The inquiry also heard from academics who called for greater scrutiny of tech platforms and the avoidance of mainstreaming extremist views and beliefs.

Dr Jordan McSwiney, from the University of Canberra, said there needs to be “real consequences for these platforms and their owners when they do things like let Australian neo-Nazis onto their platforms”.

“Platforms like Facebook, like Instagram, like X (Twitter) have made it increasingly difficult, if not nearly impossible now, for academics to collect data on a large scale on these platforms to understand what is happening and for them to be held to account,” he said.

“It would be good to see the Australian government be more vocal on that and pushing Australian representatives on these companies to make their platforms more accessible and more transparent.”

Dr John Coyne, head of strategic policing and law enforcement at ASPI, said it is important that extremist positions are not associated with normal parts of Australian politics.

“Our language should make it more difficult for these threat actors to recruit. Linking fringe extremist actors with half of the political mainstream may result in worse outcomes,” he said.

“Violent extremists may hide behind less objectionable terms, promoting themselves as right wing, not neo-Nazis or incels.”