Australia now has another line of defence to combat the growing threat of online terrorism and radicalisation with the opening of the new Counter Terrorism Online Centre (CTOC).
The Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke will officially open the joint covert centre in Sydney today.
The CTOC combines the powers and covert capabilities of the AFP and ASIO, and provides a new early warning system for Australia's national security.
The Albanese Government invested $106.2 million investment over four years from 2024-25 as part of the release of A Safer Australia - Australia's Counter-Terrorism and Violent Extremism Strategy 2025. In the May 2026 Budget, the Government invested a further $74 million over two years to set up Australia's first online threat centre for violent extremism, to stand alongside existing joint capabilities for child protection, foreign interference, and cyber.
The CTOC represents the next generation of safeguarding Australia's national security, as the manifestation and ideologies of terrorism shift, and offenders become younger.
The CTOC will support Australia's Joint Counter Terrorism Team (JCTT) investigations and focus on providing strategic benefit to Australia's national security by identifying and detecting online terrorism threats, including at risk, individuals, communication apps, gaming platforms and trends.
Covert operatives have been trained to identify potential terrorist actors or those at risk of manipulation and radicalisation.
The CTOC has several functions and will build its capability and activity over time.
From today, the CTOC is:
- The single-entry point for overseas partners to provide intelligence and warnings about online national security threats;
- Working to ensure intelligence operations directly support law enforcement to disrupt or arrest/charge at the right time;
- Discovering, mapping and connecting potential threats to allow for better intelligence and early intervention;
- Ready to provide advice to relevant stakeholders, including health and education agencies, about online radicalisation; and,
- Coordinating and liaising with international partners on e-training and capability, including training jointly with international partners to ensure our operators have the skills they need and interoperability.
Over the next two years the CTOC will build capability to:
- Work with national and international partners on their online covert priorities to limit duplication of effort and maximise coverage of groups of harm;
- Bring together covert online operations across the Commonwealth under the CTOC to align best practice and ensure maximum effectiveness;
- Enable the use of language models and artificial intelligence tools alongside covert operatives to enhance threat detection capability, including indicators of mobilisation to violence;
- Provide strategic intelligence assessments for at-risk sectors, to build resilience and awareness of violent extremism online; and,
- Coordinate online operations across the Commonwealth and with State and Territory partners.
After establishment and potential additional investment, the CTOC aims to:
- Eventually combine artificial intelligence and human ingenuity through technology-enabled online operations;
- Be Australia's centre of excellence for online operations targeting violent extremism; and
- Bring together industry, international, and government partners.
Quotes attributable to Minister for Home Affairs, Tony Burke
"More young Australians are being radicalised online, and it happens very quickly.
"The Counter Terrorism Online Centre provides - for the first time - a single point of coordination for online threats. A converged threat environment needs a converged response, the CTOC brings together the expertise of the AFP and ASIO to keep Australians safe.
"The capability we've always had to monitor extremists in the meeting room, now extends to the chat room.
"The CTOC will go where the threat is, regardless of ideology, online location, or actors. Their work will complement efforts of state and territory police to make sure the right action is being taken to identify and disrupt threats.
" We already have centres dedicated to protecting children and combatting cyber crime; establishing a centre for online violence extremism and terrorism builds on that model.
"The work from within the CTOC complements existing counter terrorism efforts, particularly the work of the Joint Counter Terrorism and National Security Investigations Teams, who continue to work tirelessly across the country to identify, disrupt and investigate terrorism and related offences which threaten our national security."
Quotes attributable to ASIO Director General Mike Burgess
"In a security environment where radicalisation increasingly occurs online, and extremists increasingly engage with each other in encrypted chat groups, ASIO and our partners must be online too.
"Extremists are often security conscious and suspicious of outsiders. People who self-radicalise online often show few, if any real world indicators they are mobilising to violence.
"Online operations are often the only way we can identify and engage with these individuals to understand their intent, capability, identity and targets.
"ASIO's covert online operators recently gained access to a global, private neo-Nazi Telegram group. They found an Australia-based individual glorifying convicted terrorists and researching attack capability. ASIO's investigation identified exactly who the individual was. Because the person was younger than 16, and in the very early stages of radicalisation, the child was referred to a Countering Violent Extremism Program."
Quotes attributable to AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett
"Australia is now facing terrorism 2.0, where not all the lessons learned over the past 20 years apply today because of the rapid shift in the online threat environment.
"Individuals, particularly youth, can be radicalised extremely quickly, and in the past investigators have witnessed kids being self-radicalised within the same time it takes to watch a test cricket match.
"Law enforcement is dealing with a grievance generation, who are angry and feel powerless, but are willing to show their power by exerting acts of violence, consuming violent extremist material or joining sadistic online groups.
"The CTOC does not replace existing terrorism structures or investigations but it puts a magnifying glass over online hate-breeding grounds and allows investigators to identify and focus on those who are at risk or are causing risk.
"Too many kids are at the crossroads to crime. In part this is because the fertile hate-breeding grounds are where our youth live and play: gaming platforms, dedicated encrypted communication platforms and social media platforms.
"The CTOC is not just an investment in our national security, but it is an investment in protecting our future - our kids."
