The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) on Monday raised the country's national terrorism threat level to "probable" for the first time since 2014, amid community tensions over the war in the Gaza Strip, ABC News reported.
ASIO's director-general, Mike Burgess, said that Australia's security environment has become more volatile and unpredictable, seeing as how citizens "are being radicalized and being radicalized more quickly." Burgess noted that the new threat level was not caused by intelligence of any specific imminent attack, but he did say that security agencies disrupted eight incidents in the last four months that involved alleged terrorism or were investigated as potential acts of terrorism. He stressed that while Gaza was not the cause of the alert increase, it was a "significant driver."
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese assured that "probable does not mean inevitable" and called for citizens to debate political issues like the conflict in Gaza "peacefully."