Australia is at a “crossroads” facing a “tsunami” of youth radicalisation online, with children as young as 11 drawn into violent ideologies in days rather than months, acting Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner Sandra Booth told the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security on Wednesday.
From months to days
Booth said the tempo of cases had shattered earlier assumptions about how long grooming takes. Radicalisation that once unfolded over “months or years” can now happen “within days,” she said, describing networks that hunt vulnerable teenagers through encrypted platforms and sadistic communities.
She cited a 13-year-old boy charged after police allegedly found a notebook at his home outlining plans to shoot classmates. “This was not in the US. This was in Australia,” Booth told the committee. In a separate matter, investigators charged a teenager over child abuse material after he allegedly joined an online network and requested his handle be written on a baby’s face while the infant was forced to vape.
Scale of the youth caseload
Since 2020, counter-terrorism authorities have opened investigations involving 65 children aged 12 to 17, with 35 of those files resulting in charges, Booth said. ASIO Deputy Director-General Claire McGinnis told the same hearing that the agency’s terrorism caseload was skewing younger, while Home Affairs officials confirmed an 11-year-old had entered a de-radicalisation program.
ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess has repeatedly described the overall threat environment as unprecedented even though the national terrorism threat level remains at “probable.” Booth attributed the acceleration to artificial intelligence tools, a “grievance generation” of adolescents, and predators who turn “desperate victims into perpetrators” by coercing them to assault siblings or live-stream animal cruelty on camera.
AI and encryption on the committee’s agenda
McGinnis said offenders were using AI chatbots to research and plan attacks, noting that a bot “can bypass hours of work, for example, making attack planning more efficient.” Encrypted messaging remained an “enduring challenge,” she said, because it enabled anonymity, adding that privacy “should not be absolute when we’re dealing with significant threats.”
Powers and prevention
Booth said the AFP was considering whether to seek expanded authority to disrupt extremist chat rooms more overtly, including by posting messages that alert users police are present. Home Affairs counter-terrorism coordinator Brendan Dowling said most referrals to de-radicalisation programs still come from law enforcement, suggesting communities identify at-risk youth too late.
“Radicalised young people often do not look like what our community imagines,” Dowling said. The committee’s hearings this week are expected to feed recommendations on earlier intervention by parents and schools, and on whether Parliament should grant police more tools to interrupt online recruitment before plots move offline.