Australia’s terror threat level system is under review after spy chief Mike Burgess argued it doesn’t capture the reality of a rapidly deteriorating national security environment.

ASIO’s Director-General used his annual threat assessment on Wednesday evening to argue that while the nation’s terror threat level remains at “probable”, it “does not tell the full story”.

The threat level of “probable” deems that there’s a greater than 50 per cent chance of an onshore attack or attack planning in the next 12 months.

It was the same level Australia was under when 15 innocent people were killed in an alleged terrorist attack on a Jewish event at Bondi Beach on December 14.

“The next level on the scale is expected, which applies when we have intelligence about a specific attack. We do not,” Mr Burgess said in his speech.

“But we do know the environment is degrading and acts of politically motivated violence are becoming more likely than ‘probable’ suggests.

“I do not believe the system was designed for a situation like the one we now face. ’Probable’ does not tell the full story.”

Mr Burgess said he was in conversations with Home Affairs secretary Stephanie Foster about the system.

ASIO has foiled 14 major terror plots since the massacre at Bondi, with Mr Burgess saying he was “gravely concerned” about the temperature and trajectory of threats.

He said people were getting radicalised online more rapidly and ASIO were recording “increasingly embracing mixed ideologies”.

He also acknowledged rising anti-Semitism in Australia and said that “hatred of Jews is one thing virtually all the violent extremist cohorts have in common”.

Mr Burgess went on to list neo-nazis, Islamic extremism, “issue-motivated extremists”, far-left activists, anarchists and nation states including the Iranian regime and its IRGC military branch — which launched firebombing attacks against Australian synagogues — as key threats.

Before his address on Wednesday evening, the ASIO boss featured images of the 15 lives lost at Bondi, followed by a minute silence.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke on Thursday acknowledged the challenge ASIO faced and said he was alert to Mr Burgess’s concerns.

“Once you’re at ‘probable’, the next official ratcheting up is ‘expected’, where you have a very specific event that you have had intelligence about that is about to occur,” Mr Burke told ABC Radio.

“What Mike Burgess was making very clear last night is it has continued to increase the intensity of the threat level since we originally did the escalation to ‘probable’.”

Mr Burke told Parliament the ‘probable’ grading was a spectrum and “not to presume that because the threat alert level remains a ‘probable’ that we are at the same spot” as when it was first set.

Shadow home affairs minister Jonno Duiam said the Liberal Party was open to working with the Albanese Government on any necessary amendments or new laws needed to strengthen national security legislation.

“I think we should do everything we can to protect Australia,” he said.

“The Government’s number one job — no matter whether they’re Liberal, Labor, whatever make-up they might be — should be to keep Australians safe.”

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor claimed that there was a perception that security agencies “dropped the ball” before the Bondi attack.

Mr Taylor made the remarks on Thursday at a CEDA conference in Canberra while talking up his immigration policy, which he said would “discriminate heavily” based on values.

“The truth is the perception is that they have dropped the ball, and I think this has got to be fixed,” Mr Taylor said.

“There is a very strong sense, and I think it was particularly exacerbated, obviously, by what happened with Bondi in December last year, there’s a sense that the screening for this — given that one of those people is not a citizen — the screening for this is not happening, and that the intelligence and security agencies have dropped the ball on this.”