Canberra, Mar 18 (IANS): Australia's domestic intelligence agency ASIO will ditch the expressions "Islamic extremism" and "right-wing extremism" to refer to violent threats as the labels are "no longer fit for purpose".

In his second annual threat assessment on Wednesday evening, ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess said the terms will be replaced with "religiously motivated violent extremism" and "ideologically motivated violent extremism", which more accurately describe what security agencies are seeing, reports dpa news agency.

"These are umbrella terms, and there may be circumstances where we need to call out a specific threat that sits underneath them... But we believe this approach will more accurately and flexibly describe security-relevant activities," Burgess said as he delivered the assessment here.

The ASIO chief said that due to reduced physical mobility during the coronavirus pandemic, foreign spies and violent extremists have taken to the internet.

He revealed that a number of foreign spies and their proxies "in double figures" were either removed from Australia or incapacitated over the past twelve months.

ASIO also investigated a "nest of spies" operating in the country which developed relationships with politicians, a foreign embassy, a state police service and successfully recruited "an Australian government security clearance holder who had access to sensitive details of defence technology", he said.

The government employee's security clearance was cancelled and the foreign spies were "quietly and professionally removed them from Australia", Burgess said.

He said that Australia's threat level remained set at "probable", as it was a year ago, which means ASIO has "credible intelligence that individuals and groups have the capability and intent to conduct terrorism onshore".