Changing the future for organised crime

It would give you chills - the chair of the Ministerial Advisory Group on Organised Crime lifts the lid on a scary future for New Zealand.

The final report of the Ministerial Advisory Group on Organised Crime that hits Associate Police Minister Casey Costello's desk today recommends setting up a three-year trial of a structure under a new minister for organised crime.

The report won't be made public for another two weeks but today The Detail talked to the chair of the group about what the country needs to do to not just attack the issue inside the country, but to stop future threats taking a hold.

Steve Symon is a senior partner at Meredith Connell, and a former crown prosecutor, who has a wealth of experience in a world that most of us have no idea about.

He and a hand-picked team, which includes former top cop John Tims and academic and gangs expert Jarrod Gilbert, have spent this year looking at the issue with a broad brush, including aspects other than the drug trade. It looked at not just what's happening now with organised crime but where it might be going.

"We're not trying to create more [regulation]," said Symon.

"But we are trying to say: this is a national security threat. This is a big problem for New Zealand. And we need to treat it with the respect it needs."

Symon said some of those things that have devastated other countries will be breaking through our borders eventually.

"What we're starting to see more and more of, is [organised criminals] making money out of things like cyber fraud, migrant exploitation, the black market in tobacco ... so whatever the commodity is, they'll look to make money out of it.

"For example, there are things we don't have here like fentanyl, which organised crime are likely to try to bring into New Zealand at some point. When that happens ... it will be a new issue that we have to confront.

"I think it is a case of when, not if."

Another issue is black market tobacco, which is a huge issue in Australia. A special task force has been set up to combat it, not just because the profits are so great, but because those profits are going back into methamphetamine and cocaine. Symon called such enterprises 'enablers'.

"Australia is the ghost of Christmas Future for us," he said. "What happens there will happen here. So we need to be ready for that."

The advisory group wants to set up a "data lake" that would consolidate all the puddles of information held by various government agencies to improve coordination.

"The idea is to say, we have this information held by government in different little pots - little silos - all around the show. What we're saying is we should get that information, put it into one place. And then we have controls on it.

"So we have controls of the information going into the lake, so we make sure it's only information that might be relevant towards the fight on organised crime.

"And then we have controls on the information coming out of the lake, so what access someone who works in MSD might have would be very low level ... so they wouldn't be able to access much of the lake, they can only access what they can currently get in terms of the data they need to do their job.

"You can't go fishing in the lake.

"But if you're the most senior members of our police who are dealing with organised crime, they might have broader access. And if they could have that collation of data, and we could run AI over it so that we could pick out themes - so when we have things like the baggage handlers" [recently arrested for corruption in helping to bring drugs through Auckland Airport] "we could see the anomalies. We could see the unusual details, down to these baggage handlers working at particular times when imports are coming through; or working on days when they're rostered off; or those kind of features which we need to lean on the same technology that organised crime is using, to combat them."

Other suggestions raised in previous reports from the group include removing cash from society - including the wages of seasonal workers and other key sectors that are targeted for migrant exploitation.

Symon is clear about the danger we are in if there isn't a concentrated effort to hit organised criminal gangs.

"It's frightening where this could go," he said.

"It's frightening where it is already. I think if New Zealanders were in the discussions that I've been in, with senior members of enforcement, it would give them chills.

"If we can get to the top of the cliff and stop some of these things coming into New Zealand ... and also, at the bottom of the cliff, strip some of the money off these criminals before it's taken out of New Zealand, and take that money and put it back into the system, it's huge.

"We're not going to be able to stop organised crime - it's a global issue. What we can do is make New Zealand the hardest place to do organised crime, so that we just deter organised crime from coming here.

"Just be too hard. Too hard a market."

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