The leader of a right-wing party has called for ASIO boss Mike Burgess to resign over the spy agency’s failure to stop the Bondi Islamic terror attack.
Former senator Gerard Rennick, who quit the Liberal National Party to form his own People First Party in 2024, spoke out this weekend after Mr Burgess told News Corp journalist Sharri Markson in a sit-down interview for her new book that his warnings about the threat of anti-Semitism had been ignored.
Markson, who has previously published stories based on Mossad sources, wrote in an article for The Australian promoting the book on Saturday that Mr Burgess felt “profound frustration and regret” that his public statements had been “underestimated by those in leadership positions” before the massacre.
“I was concerned about the trajectory of our threat environment and I made that known publicly,” Mr Burgess said in the interview.
“Of course, it is a matter of deep regret. Could I have done more? Perhaps yes, I could have shouted stronger, but in the end I would suggest security is a shared responsibility in society, and others actually had to take up that call, either challenge me for more details or take action.”
WHY HASN’T THE HEAD OF ASIO BEEN SACKED OVER BONDI? IS THERE SOME KIND OF COVERUP?
Check out this drivel from the head of ASIO – Mike Burgess.
This guy is a national security threat based on his incompetence and buck passing alone.
He laments that leaders didn’t take his… pic.twitter.com/VtBDS0XgaA
— Gerard Rennick (@RennickGBR) September 5, 2026
Mr Rennick responded by calling Mr Burgess’s comments “drivel”, asking why he hadn’t been sacked over Bondi and if there was “some kind of cover-up”, and labelled the spy chief a “national security threat based on his incompetence and buck-passing alone”.
“[Burgess] laments that leaders didn’t take his warnings about ‘anti-Semitism’ more seriously prior to the Bondi shootings. The point of intelligence agencies is to identify specific threats and shut them down before they occur,” he said on X.
“Burgess failed to do this. There were multiple red flags before the Bondi shootings by the Islamic Terrorists, that ASIO and the AFP failed to act on.
“Claiming that he warned about ‘anti-Semitism’ is pure buck-passing. He then has the audacity to claim that anti-Semitic behaviour increased permission for the shootings to occur.”
Mr Rennick went on to say “anti-Semitism doesn’t carry a gun” and that “it’s like blaming climate deniers for climate change or Albanese claiming people that don’t like him are a threat to society”.
“Burgess should acknowledge that his agency failed to take Islamic extremism seriously and resign,” Mr Rennick said.
“It beggars belief this guy is being taken seriously along with the fact that no political party other than People First thinks he should be sacked.”
In the interview Mr Burgess was also quoted as saying he was “concerned” about anti-Semitism at a pro-Palestine rally at the Opera House in October 9, 2023, and Markson wrote that his “strong view” was that it then became “normalised” because it was not properly addressed by law enforcement or political leaders.
“I was concerned about this and concerned about behaviours being normalised,” Mr Burgess said.
“Those behaviours being normalised raised the temperature, which increased the permission for politically motivated violence and, sadly, we saw that: from threatening, intimidating behaviour through to direct targeting of people, businesses and places of worship, through to killings of Jewish Australians.”
However, another article from The Australian in December 2023 revealed that a pro-Israel Labor MP told a Jewish constituent that Mr Burgess had advised her that pro-Palestine rallies served as a “pressure release” and reduced the risk of a domestic terror attack.
Mr Burgess, an unelected bureaucrat who earlier this year was granted extraordinary powers enabling him to recommend the banning of political parties as “hate groups”, and went on to do so in relation to the White Australia Party, admitted in a Senate hearing in February that ASIO “did not know what the perpetrators of the Bondi attack were planning, or indeed that they were planning anything”, but said it did not mean that his officers “made mistakes”.
In March he held a secret meeting with Israel’s president Isaac Herzog, who also gave Markson an exclusive interview during his visit, at ASIO headquarters in Canberra, a situation independent senator David Pocock at the time described as “unprecedented”.
Israel is not part of the Five Eyes intelligence network of which Australia is a member, and immediately after the Bondi attack Israeli intelligence officials falsely claimed there was “no doubt” Iran was behind the massacre, which was later confirmed to be linked to ISIS.
Mossad also claimed last year that a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp leader was behind an alleged arson attack in Sydney, allegations repeated by ASIO, the Prime Minister and the Australian Federal Police, but NSW Police confirmed in a statement to parliament that there was no evidence of Iranian involvement.
The spy agency was criticised in 2024 after being caught encouraging a 13-year-old autistic teenager’s fascination with ISIS before charging him with terror offences, and was grilled in the Senate for pumping resources into DEI initiatives including seven “staff-led diversity” networks.
Mr Rennick’s comments come after the Australian Federal Police came under renewed scrutiny for its failure to stop the massacre due to a submission by a former senior counter-terrorism officer to the royal commission into anti-Semitism.
The ex-commander alleged there were critical staff shortages, and that the Labor government forced the agency to focus on so-called right-wing extremism instead of radical Islam in the lead-up to the attack. Former prime minister Tony Abbott then said he had been told the same thing by counter-terror officers.
Header image: Left, Gerard Rennick (Facebook). Right, Mike Burgess (Lowy Institute).
