Mike Burgess, the spycatcher who gives ASIO a very public face

If the intelligence community had its Logies, ASIO chief Mike Burgess would be chasing gold this week.

The director-general of security, who is better known than some junior ministers, appeared beside Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Tuesday as they revealed how ASIO identified Iran as behind at least two, and probably more, of the recent antisemitic attacks in Australia. It was spycraft at its best.

The times suit ASIO. Enjoying bipartisan respect, Burgess presides over an organisation that flourishes in an increasingly threat-filled environment.

The times suit Burgess personally, too. He has carved out the highest public profile in the job of any of the organisation’s heads. He is a relentless public promoter of ASIO’s role and successes, in what he paints as very alarming foreign and local security worlds.

Burgess, who came to Australia from the United Kingdom as a small child, has a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Adelaide. Before being appointed by the Morrison government in 2019 to lead ASIO, he was director-general of the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD), an intelligence organisation that focuses on defensive and offensive cyber security.

ANU security expert John Blaxland, a co-author of the official history of ASIO, captures the multifaceted Burgess.

“He’s the kind of guy who in other circumstances would be a hoodie-wearing, basement-dwelling introverted geek. He’s a technocrat. He grew up with ones and zeros, then mastered the art of management and of communicating his vision in words.”

Blaxland says Burgess’ skills matched a changed environment, as spycraft became increasingly digital and security threats often operated through the devices in people’s pockets or on their desks.

Burgess took the previously deeply secret ASD out of the shadows. For example, in 2019, speaking to the Lowy Institute, he described how, working from Canberra at the height of the Islamic State (Daesh) threat, ASD cyber operators degraded the militant group’s communications, causing chaos.

His penchant for publicity is not to everyone’s taste. A former public servant, writing on the Pearls and Irritations website about Burgess’ recent Hawke Lecture, noted acerbically, “Those with a regard for their welfare would do well not to get between [Burgess] and a soapbox”.

Burgess (who makes strategic television appearances) in his 2023 threat assessment speech explained his approach. “At ASIO, public engagements like this one are driven by the triple T’s of Threat, Trust and Team. I want to improve awareness of threats, enhance trust through transparency, and build our team by recruiting the best and the brightest.”

He started in 2020 his annual threat-assessment lectures, which he delivers to an audience of media and Canberra notables, laying out the security picture and highlighting ASIO efforts.

In the 2024 assessment, he set political hares running when he canvassed how a “former Australian politician” had “sold out their country, party and former colleagues to advance the interests” of a foreign regime. The days that followed turned into a guessing game of names.

In these and other set piece appearances, Burgess mixes his dire warnings about the threats with true-life tales.

In his Hawke lecture, he had an intriguing story of horticultural “in-person espionage” during an overseas delegation’s tour of a “sensitive” facility.

“During an official tour of the site, a member of the delegation broke away, entered a restricted area and photographed a rare and valuable variety of fruit tree. An alert staff member discovered and deleted the images but it later emerged photos weren’t the only things taken that day – several of the tree’s branches were missing.

"The delegate had snapped them off and smuggled them out of Australia.

"Almost certainly, the stolen plant material allowed scientists in the other country to reverse engineer and replicate two decades of Australian research and development.”

This week Albanese and other ministers heaped praise on ASIO. It hasn’t always been the way with Labor.

In the 1950s, then-Labor leader HV (“Doc”) Evatt accused ASIO of conspiring with the Menzies government in the Petrov affair^[1] – using the defection of a Russian spy for political advantage against Labor. (ASIO’s official history rejects the “conspiring” claim, although the affair was very helpful for the government.)

When the Whitlam government arrived in office, Labor was deeply suspicious of ASIO. For decades, the communist threat had been ASIO’s preoccupation, and many prominent Labor figures were in its files.

Whitlam’s attorney-general, Lionel Murphy, led an infamous raid on ASIO’s then-Melbourne headquarters with Commonwealth police. The affair was damaging for the Labor government and for ASIO.

ASIO often was its own worst enemy, with the official history documenting many stuff-ups, occasionally hilarious, as well as more serious bad behaviour, over the years.

It was only by about the 1990s that ASIO - after it and the intelligence community more widely had been subjected to a string of reviews - had cleaned up its act.

The decline of communism and the rise of contemporary terrorist threats made for an easier relationship with Labor.

The 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, the Bali bombings and subsequent incidents led to ASIO’s powers and resources being greatly boosted. ASIO now has a staff of more than 2,000 (although it has taken to classifying the actual numbers).

Meanwhile, oversight and checks on the organisation became much stronger. It is subject to an inspector-general and its top officials appear before Senate estimates. There is also a parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, which operates on a bipartisan basis.

When Burgess arrived at ASIO, it came within the Home Affairs empire. This saw two tough men in a common kennel. ASIO reports directly to the relevant minister, not through the departmental secretary. Then Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo was keen for better budgetary co-ordination; Burgess insisted he make the final call on ASIO’s proposed budget and documents be closely held.

After the 2022 change of government, ASIO went back to the Attorney-General’s empire, where it had been in earlier times.

Post this year’s election, it found itself back in the Home Affairs domain. But with Pezzullo gone, Burgess and current Home Affairs Secretary Stephanie Foster are thought to have a smooth relationship.

One fascinating question in ASIO’s Iran operation is what help it might have had from Israel. Sky has reported it was assisted by a “tip-off from Israeli intelligence” (while emphasising the vast majority of the work was done by ASIO). Albanese has declined to be drawn, beyond saying, “the basis of the intelligence and the operation was ASIO here, and the work that they have done”.

Burgess has referred to liaising with “foreign partners.” We may have to wait for his next appearance at Senate estimates for any Israeli role, however minor, to be acknowledged. Or not. Over the years, Australia has had a strong, albeit sometimes contested, relationship with the Israeli intelligence establishment.

References

1. ^{^} Petrov affair (theconversation.com)