In Mid 2025, the Australian government began debating amendments to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2025 (‘the Bill’).

The Bill seeks to amend the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act 1979 (‘ASIO Act’) to permanently extend the broader, unchecked powers that were previously given to Australia’s intelligence agency, which ended on September 7, 2025.

The broader powers, if the amendments were to pass through the Senate, would facilitate the permanent nature of increased abilities to compel adult questioning warrants for alleged threats to Australian national security.

Ordinarily, this wouldn’t be a particularly bad thing, right?

Australia, and the world, appear to be more volatile and violent than ever, and increasing surveillance is likely a good thing to ensure that Australian agencies are equipped with the capabilities to keep us safe.

However, these powers granted to ASIO were only meant to be temporary in nature.

For example, the initial introduction of questioning warrants, and other extraordinary powers, came in the wake of the atrocities of the terrorist attack in New York in September 2001. In the wake of the shocking events that took place at Bondi Beach in December 2025, the support for increased surveillance may seem obvious and subject to intense community support. However, it is alleged that ASIO was notified about one of the Bondi attackers in 2019 and refrained from taking action, even with the increased powers it had until September 7, 2025, to obtain adult questioning warrants to combat potential terrorist threats.

Alarmingly, one of the increased powers that will remain a permanent amendment, if passed, allows for a questioning warrant to be obtained for the ‘promotion of communal violence’. According to the ASIO Act, this phrasing is defined as including ‘activities that are directed to promoting violence between different groups of persons in the Australian community so as to endanger the peace, order or good government of the Commonwealth’.

This definition is rather vague and subjective.

Is promoting violence the same as inciting it, or is it merely being reckless about one’s activities being linked to violence (like we see with the hate speech laws being legislated throughout the country)?

What does endangering the peace mean in the context of these powers?

In its current form, the Bill does not shed light on this, which means that the parameters of ‘community violence’ may change at the will of the elected government and what they deem to be relevant threats to Australian national security.

The current Albanese government seems to put a particular emphasis on ‘right-wing extremists’ being one of the highest risks to Australia’s national security. However, this has not always been the case. Upon reading one of the governmental inquiries during a Liberal government in 2019 that discussed ‘right-wing extremism’, the then government claimed that such groups were prone to being antisemitic. However, under Albanese’s labour government, the ‘right-wing extremists’ seemingly sit on the opposite side of the political scale, as they recently allegedly planned attacks on mosques in Australia.

It seems that, no matter which side is in power or who is targeted, the current Australian national security agenda seems to lack efficacy in its approach, can vary from government-to-government, and may be weaponised as a tool to silence political dissent, similar to what we are seeing with the provision of the hate speech laws in Australia.

If these investigative powers were to become permanent, we could see the erosion of core principles within contemporary democracies.

The principle most alarmingly relevant to the Bill would be procedural fairness, which relates to the making of fair decisions in the administrative process of the law. In contrast to this principle, the Bill promotes broad powers to investigate with only ‘reasonable grounds’ being an element to facilitate the issuing of a questioning warrant. The introduction of these rather ambiguous amendments to security heads within the Bill could result in a lack of due process during investigations by ASIO, particularly via the subjective interpretation of the phrase “promotion of communal violence” and what conduct it could encapsulate.

We can already become criminals for what we say, whether there was intention behind the words or not – do we want to risk further prejudice via the permanent establishment of these new ASIO laws?

If you do not want to be subject to the permanent extension of these powers, now is the time to contact your representatives in the Senate before they vote on making these changes permanent and only subject to periodic statutory review, as opposed to sunset clauses that instantly cease these extraordinary powers every time they are enacted.

Dr Alexander Hatzikalimnios is a legal academic whose research and writing focuses on addressing contemporary threats to human rights issues in Australia.