Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was evacuated from his official Canberra residence for more than three hours on Tuesday evening after a bomb threat written in Mandarin and linked to opposition to a Chinese dance troupe banned on the mainland was passed to federal police, the latest in a pattern of politically motivated threats to Australian officials that authorities said had reached 950 investigated incidents over the past two years.
The Australian Federal Police responded to an alleged security incident at The Lodge at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, February 24, relocating Albanese to another location while officers conducted a thorough search of the property. Nothing suspicious was located.
“There is no current threat to the community or public safety,” the AFP said in a statement. Albanese returned home after 9 p.m. Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said police had spent “a few hours investigating” and that the prime minister had been able to return “once they’d confirmed it was safe to do so.”
Two emails, written in Chinese and seen by CNN, threatened harm against Albanese if Shen Yun’s upcoming Australian performances went ahead and falsely claimed that explosives had been placed at his residence. The emails were sent to the dance group’s host organisation, the Falun Dafa Association of Australia, on February 10 and February 22. The threat stated that “large quantities of nitroglycerin explosives” had been placed around The Lodge, on Adelaide Avenue in the Deakin area of Canberra, and warned that the residence would be “blown into ruins” and “blood will flow like a river” if Shen Yun’s performances proceeded. It is understood the email received on Sunday was reported to the AFP two days later.
Shen Yun is a classical Chinese music and dance company founded in New York in 2006. It is backed by the Falun Gong religious movement, which emerged in China in the mid-1990s, surging in popularity before being banned and suppressed by the Chinese government.
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The Falun Dafa Association describes the organisation as a peaceful spiritual practice rooted in the Buddhist tradition, while Shen Yun’s stated mission is to revive traditional Chinese culture. The group is scheduled to perform in multiple Australian cities over the coming month, with its first appearance set for the Gold Coast. The Lodge, built in the 1920s and set on four hectares in Deakin near Parliament House, is one of two official prime ministerial residences. Albanese had used it as his wedding venue when he married Jodie Haydon in November.
The Falun Dafa Association of Australia said in a statement that all threats had been reported to national security and law enforcement authorities.
“The coordinated pattern of bomb threats, death threats, and systematic intimidation constitutes more than harassment, it reflects tactics consistent with state-sponsored intimidation designed to silence dissent beyond China’s borders,” the association said.
The emails are similar to others received by local Shen Yun presenters in multiple countries over the past two weeks, including South Korea, Denmark, and Austria, according to Leeshai Lemish, a Shen Yun narrator based in the United States. Lemish said the group had tracked approximately 200 similar threats against them since March 2024, all following a pattern of harassment and attempts to sabotage performances.
China’s Foreign Ministry said Beijing consistently opposed all forms of violent attacks, while simultaneously distancing the Chinese government from any association with the threats. Spokesperson Mao Ning said at a press briefing on Wednesday that the Shen Yun performances were “by no means normal cultural activities, but rather a political tool used by the Falun Gong organisation to spread cult information and amass money.”
In January, the Chinese consulates in Sydney and Melbourne had issued statements attacking Shen Yun and urging Australians not to attend its shows, warning that the performances were a political tool used to “disseminate anti-China narratives and cult ideology.” No Chinese government official or entity has been publicly identified as having any connection to the threatening emails. Australian police declined to comment on the source of the threat.
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A spokeswoman for the Falun Dafa Association said that while Shen Yun regularly received threats, the emails represented an escalation. “Recent reports of a death threat directed at Australia’s prime minister highlight the dangerous trajectory of CCP-linked intimidation tactics,” the spokeswoman said. The attribution of the threats to the Chinese Communist Party was made by Falun Gong representatives, not by Australian law enforcement officials, who have not publicly identified the source.
Albanese addressed the incident publicly for the first time on Wednesday at an event in Melbourne, urging Australians to lower the temperature of political discourse.
“I think it’s just a reminder, take every opportunity to tell people, turn the heat down for goodness sake. We can’t take these things for granted,” he said. Earlier, he posted a photograph of his dog Toto standing by a door inside The Lodge on Instagram with the caption: “Toto on alert but all good.” He thanked the AFP for its work and professionalism.
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said he was grateful Albanese was safe and condemned threats against politicians as “utterly abhorrent.” Nationals leader David Littleproud urged people to engage in political debate without perpetrating “hate and violence against any of the elected officials.”
According to the AFP, there were 950 incidents involving threats to politicians investigated between 2024 and 2025. The threat to Albanese came the same week that the AFP bomb squad was called to the Hyatt Hotel in Canberra, less than a kilometre from The Lodge, after rocks were thrown through a window during a major Defence Force summit, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of attendees. Senator Gallagher said politicians in Australia were “for the most part doing their jobs trying to represent the community and everyone deserves to go to work safe.”
Australian federal elections are scheduled to be held by May 17, 2026. Albanese’s Labor government trails the opposition Liberal-National coalition in several recent opinion polls.