Security is not a settled state nor about always guaranteeing stability. It is about reassurance and trust amid instability and threat, and it is maintained with a shared acceptance that risk can be managed but not eliminated.
2026 marks 25 years since the September 11 attacks. It was a moment that redefined terrorism as a persistent challenge, prompted creation of new counter-terrorism architecture and, by drawing resources and attention, would provide space for the rise of authoritarianism.
In that time, the liberal-democratic world has several times tried to call ‘mission accomplished’ on terrorism and fleetingly prioritised other threats. And then it’s been surprised by terrorist evolution, as when ISIS burst onto the scene in 2013 and when Hamas attacked Israel in 2023.
The evidence suggests democracies are at their best when tackling an agreed single threat. That’s why they struggled to simultaneously counter Islamist terrorism and constrain China’s malicious rise, and they couldn’t easily manage the global financial crisis without becoming vulnerable to Moscow and Beijing. Too often in these 25 years, we have been able to address strategic threats, such as China, only when thinking terrorism is defeated or degraded.
But the reality is that terrorism has never been defeated; it has evolved and adapted. As must we. Transparency with the public means being clear that there is no longer a top security threat; there are multiple, simultaneous and cascading threats, and we cannot afford to (again) put more resources on counterterrorism by shifting those we apply to China.
For Australia, the December 2025 Bondi Beach terror attack signalled not the return of terrorism but its persistence. More importantly, the attack exposed how poorly understood that persistence had become. In the aftermath, public debate frequently treated the attack as a system failure rather than as evidence of a system operating in a permanently uncertain environment. The national terrorism threat level of ‘Probable’ was discussed as if it were a temporary alert, rather than a description of enduring risk. A mechanism designed to provide clarity was not preventing mixed messages.
That misunderstanding matters. It leads to unattainable expectations of police and intelligence agencies. Much of the public unreasonably expects these institutions to identify intent before it fully forms, intervene before violence occurs and do so within strict legal and ethical boundaries, every time. Adversaries, by contrast, require only a single success. After an attack, fragments align and warning signs appear obvious. Beforehand, intelligence is partial, ambiguous and contested. Prevention is judged in hindsight; decision-making happens without it.
Governments, too, face intense pressure to act decisively in the wake of trauma. Following Bondi, the federal and New South Wales governments moved quickly to strengthen firearms and hate-crime laws. Their response reflected the seriousness of the moment and a responsibility to restore confidence. But urgency can narrow perspective. Law cannot substitute for judgment, nor can it resolve challenges that are social, behavioural and informational even more than they are criminal. We require not only law and order but social order, driven by a culture that reflects Australian values—in which the question is not which freedoms need to be restricted for security but rather what security is needed to protect our freedoms.
More than 25 years of counterterrorism experience has shown that our societal culture must be nurtured regardless of our laws, which all eventually become outdated and require updating. Recovery from terror attacks comes from the social cohesion and national resilience that existed the day before the crisis. We don’t need hindsight to assess that, before Bondi, the resilience and cohesion of Australia and indeed most of the democratic world had weakened dangerously.
The ‘Probable’ terror threat level that applied before the Bondi attack meant a terrorist incident was more than 50 percent likely. But that terror threat level is distinct from our national resilience and social cohesion. It is vital to understand that the terror threat level had been ‘Probable’ almost continuously since 2014. At the same time, our level of social cohesion meant that our resilience to crises and ability to work together to recover was strong. It is why we effectively need two ratings, one for the terror threat and one for national resilience.
We have a societal problem well beyond the terror threat level and one that involves heightened strain on democratic practice: how disagreement is expressed, how authority is challenged, and how far tolerance extends before it undermines the conditions that make tolerance possible. Australia, like other nations, has tolerated the intolerable and accepted the unacceptable. If Bondi can result in an arrest of this decline of social cohesion, then from this tragedy we can become stronger.
The decline did not emerge from a single event. It’s been a product of long-term trends, in particular falling public trust in institutions, accelerated by online technology. There is no short-term magic solution.
While security should be about protecting freedoms, not sacrificing them, such secure freedom does come at an ongoing monetary cost. This is why the public needs elected leaders to be transparent about the threats, the consequences of inaction and the requirements to maintain a cohesive society even in an unstable world.
Institutional roles must be clear. Security agencies are not arbiters of belief, nor should they be drawn into regulating lawful thought or expression, however offensive. Respectful disagreement should be seen as part of the solution, not censored. In his foundational essay, ‘On Liberty’, John Stuart Mill wrote that ‘unity of opinion, unless resulting from the fullest and freest comparison of opposite opinions, is not desirable.’
Yet democracies cannot afford to ignore the environments in which intimidation and aggression are normalised and amplified. When left unaddressed, these environments lower the threshold at which violence becomes thinkable.
The challenge at this 25-year mark is therefore not simply one of capability, powers or funding, though all matter, but of democratic discipline. It requires leaders willing to resist absolutism, institutions prepared to explain limits rather than promise certainty, and citizens willing to live with disagreement without resorting to coercion or silence.
This volume is offered as both a reflection and a guide: a consideration of what the past quarter-century of counterterrorism has taught Australia and what the post-Bondi moment demands of us now. It reflects respect for the professionals across law enforcement, intelligence, policy, law, academia and communities who operate daily in an imperfect system confronting an adaptive threat. It involves authors who have had experience in the counterterrorism and security fields for much of these 25 years, including across intelligence, law enforcement and policy. Some authors are experts who directly responded to the rise of al Qaeda and ISIS, including in the development and implementation of counterterrorism policies and laws.
The purpose of the volume is to engage seriously with complexity, to interrogate assumptions, expose trade-offs and encourage a more mature national conversation about risk, resilience and responsibility.
Australia’s strategic environment is more complex than ever. Navigating it will depend less on finding perfect answers than on sustaining the institutions, norms and habits of judgment that allow a democratic society to not simply balance security and freedom but be securely free.
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