Australia and its Five Eyes partners have issued a collective call to action to combat what the nation's spy chief describes as a "shocking" rise in youth radicalisation. ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess has revealed around 20 per cent of his agency's priority counter-terrorism cases involve young people.
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00:00For the last 10 years, there's been a steady decline in the age of people who are becoming
00:07involved in violent extremism, and that has accelerated significantly in the last two
00:12or three years. This has been a discussion that's been happening within research and
00:17within government for the last two or three years particularly, because what we're seeing
00:23is that decline is now going towards young children as young as 12, 13, 14, 15, and we've
00:34even seen a case of a 10-year-old. So yes, something is going on here that is concerning
00:41for sure.
00:42And what do you put that down to?
00:43Look, I think we have to be careful of us sort of trying to put it down to one thing.
00:50I think the reality is that nobody gets involved in these sorts of activities without a sort
00:55of confluence of things going on in their lives. And so I think, you know, violent extremism
01:03has always used the technology that is available to it. Now the technology that are available
01:09to violent extremist movements to advertise, to recruit, to approach people is expansive
01:17and it increasingly gives them reach towards young people. But this is not exclusive to
01:23violent extremism. You could say the same about many, many social problems, about grooming,
01:29about bullying, about, you know, potentially pornography. These young people have access
01:35to a lot more things because it is available in the online space.
01:41And what are some of the strategies that you've seen extremists use to recruit really
01:47young people?
01:50So the tactics they use can include, nobody goes up and approaches a young person and
01:58says, do you want to become a terrorist? That's not what's happening here. It's like anyone
02:04who wants to have influence over somebody, they befriend them, they talk about normal
02:09things with them and then they slowly introduce these more edgy and extreme and hateful concepts.
02:17So for some people, they will run a million miles when that sort of thing starts to happen.
02:24But for other young people, you know, it can be quite, it's not unlike a form of grooming.
02:32And so how have prevention programs been reworked to focus more on younger people?
02:39Yeah, so first thing to note is that all Australian states and territories have countering violent
02:46extremism early intervention capacity and programs. So that infrastructure has been
02:52in place before this declining age. And all those programs work to individually address
03:00the very specific needs that the person in front of them has. Now, the needs of young
03:05people can be different than the needs of older people. But the key to these programs
03:12doing their work is to have a very good holistic understanding of the young person, why they've
03:19got involved and what it is very specifically for them, what sort of needs were being fulfilled
03:25for that young person by being engaged in these subcultures online, and maybe engaging
03:31in some of this activity offline, and then addressing those needs and redirecting the
03:38young person towards having those needs fulfilled in much more healthy pro-social ways that
03:43sets them up for lifelong success. Because the reality is that being engaged in violent
03:51extremism is very bad outcomes for the young person. So it's not just about protecting
03:58the public, although that is some of it. It's also about protecting the young person from
04:03the harm that will come to them if they keep going deeper into these violent extremism
04:09subcultures, especially if they're getting to the point where they are on the radar of
04:15policing and intelligence agencies.
04:17It must be so challenging for intelligence agencies to keep on top of this to the extent
04:23that they're preventing every possible attack. How do you rate the efforts to cut those efforts
04:31off as early as possible at the moment?
04:34I think it's really tough because this is not necessarily the space they're being designed
04:40to be in. But I've worked significantly with my research team. We've been doing a lot of
04:47work with agencies and with people who are caring for young people. And I think there's
04:55such goodwill to try and intervene early. I've been in rooms where police or intelligence
05:01say, if it comes to them, it's gone too far. They want it to be addressed earlier. So I
05:07think there's a very genuine dedication to that. But it is difficult. It's difficult
05:14for a whole bunch of reasons. Because, you know, obviously, there's first identifying
05:22the young people who need help, and it's identifying them before they are potentially crossing
05:29a criminal threshold.
05:30Yeah. And how do you go about doing that?
05:33Well, the agencies are well versed in doing that. You know, this is a Five Eyes report.
05:39The Five Eyes share intelligence. They are, you know, scanning these spaces quite a lot.
05:48But it's also, people can come into these programs through a variety of different ways.
05:53Sometimes schools notice that there's a problem. And so they might reach out and try and refer
05:58somebody into a program. It could be a family or a community member. So there are various
06:03ways people can get a sense that maybe something's not quite right. And it's important to keep
06:10in mind, this is not just the agencies are not in the in the role of policing what people
06:16think. For them to reach that point, there must be some sort of behavioural component
06:23that is edging towards a criminal threshold.
06:27And how do you rate Australia's efforts at keeping on top of this at the moment?
06:33I think, personally, I think we do a really good job. In the Five Eyes countries, we are
06:38the only country that hasn't had a major mass casualty terrorism incident. So, but that
06:44doesn't mean we can't always continue to grow and to refine how we do things as the threat
06:51context changes and becomes more complex, then, you know, we have to adapt and change.
06:57So it's a it's a constant assessment. How are we doing? What could we do better? What
07:03works? That's the research side of things. We're constantly looking at these things.
07:08What what has proven to work? I personally think we do a pretty good job. We don't go
07:15down the road of mandatory reporting here, which is often one of the questions. But where
07:21that has happened, like in in the United Kingdom, it is generally perceived as being counterproductive.