Mike Burgess

It's been a long week already, a lot of financial data out this week of course Nick.

We saw today of course those inflation data numbers coming out, headline inflation at 4% ahead of forecast, more than it was last period and of course well above the target band for the RBA of 2-3%.

So More rate hikes are on the way.

Like the Treasury yesterday, the Prime Minister's been shifting the blame again to the Middle East and the previous government.

Yeah, he's been Prime Minister for four years, more than four years, Peter, and he's still blaming the previous coalition government for his own economic problems.

But this thing about the Middle East war, the Iran war, look, it just won't wash.

Those figures today show that, you know, headline rate at 4%, where the headline rate will include any... short-term increase in fuel prices.

It probably includes some electricity prices as well, but that's a 4%.

And sadly, we can't stop every terrorist attack or catch every spy.

The boss of ASIO, Mike Burgess, claims that ASIO has disrupted 16 potential terror threats since the Bondi attacks last year, as well as four more serious plots.

Now, David, this does sound really alarming, but what does disrupted actually mean? Were these attacks being planned? Were these plots in the early stages? Or is it just a list of people that ASIO considered to be a possible risk? But the point is, David, that the general public has got no way to assess the veracity of these claims.

And just putting it out there in this way is quite meaningless.

And given the form of Mike Burgess, it's usually a way of putting more pressure on the government for more funding and for more resources, or it's a PR stunt to suggest that ASIO is doing a lot more good work than it's actually doing and to cover over all of its failures in the recent past.

Now, ASIO does need to protect its sources and the way that it goes around its business.

That's just the nature of security and intelligence.

But they haven't even asked about that.

Oh, look, I know we all like nice, new, shiny things, and this new Women's and Children's Hospital will be a bobby dazzler, but that's no reason to knock down the old one.

Now, I don't know if you're caught up with any of this, um, Mike Burgess stuff.

Mike Burgess used to run the, uh, Signals Directorate here in South Australia, which is the really, uh, the, the really, um, top secret spook place.

He now heads up ASIO and occasionally does interviews and comes out of his lair and talks to us mortals when he thinks there is something that we need to know about.

And when he came out last week and said, "Do not talk in your Chinese car," he was talking, I suppose, to, you know, politicians and public servants and military people.

The lights turned on, the lights turned off, the engine turned off, engine turned on.

I think we're playing with fire, and one here that we obviously cannot control.

It's worth thinking about, and I'm not paranoid, and I don't think for one moment Mike Burgess is paranoid.

The findings are reflecting similar failures in similar de-radicalization programs right across Europe.

The news comes as Mike Burgess, the head of the Australian Security and Intelligence Organization, ASIO, says the spy agency's foiled 16 terrorist plots in Australia over the last nine months since the Bondi Beach massacre.

15 people were killed and forty-one injured by Islamic State-inspired Muslim terrorists during celebrations at the iconic beaches Archer Park on December the 14th last year.

A new study has found that twenty-twenty five was one of the driest years in the past three decades.