Far-right terrorism in Australia
Far-right terrorism in Australia has been seen as an increasing threat since the late 2010s, with a number of far-right extremist individuals and groups, including neo-Nazis and other hate groups, becoming known to authorities, in particular the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the Australian Federal Police (AFP). In early 2021 the first far-right extremist group was added to the list of proscribed terrorist groups, this group being the Sonnenkrieg Division. The most notorious act of right-wing terrorism by an Australian took place in New Zealand in March 2019, with the Christchurch mosque shootings. Apart from some arson and other attacks targeting Asian Australians in the 1980s in Western Australia, there have not as of 2023 been any serious attacks by right-wing extremists on Australian soil, but ASIO takes the potential threat seriously based on its intelligence (gathered by surveillance and other methods), noting that both the attack in Christchurch and the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia have had an effect on the dissemination of extremists' ideologies. Definitions of extremism and terrorism vary, but for the purposes of this article, a revised consensus definition of terrorism by Alex P. Schmid is adopted.