Source: Radio New Zealand
New Zealand needs to step up its approach to the increase in organised criminal groups targeting the country, Casey Costello says. RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Organised crime networks are escalating their activities in New Zealand, Associate Minister of Police Casey Costello says, announcing a new cross-agency plan to combat them.
“New Zealand and our Pacific neighbours are being increasingly targeted by organised criminal groups, who are using new technologies and new ways of operating,” she said. “We need a different, stronger and more cohesive response.”
- The Detail: Changing the future for organised crime
- ‘Organised crime is organised. We are not’, ministers told
- Exploring the idea of one agency responsible for transnational and serious organised crime
- Developing new methods for sharing information and data between agencies
- Putting into action a package of actions on methamphetamine harm
- Strengthening communities and addressing harm through ‘Resilience to Organised Crime’ initiatives.
Many New Zealand agencies have some level of responsibility for dealing with organised crime, but more work was needed to enable them to work together more effectively, Costello said on Saturday.
The change would mean better use of resources, powers and information that agencies collectively possess, and better accountability of efforts to combat organised crime.
Organised crime taking place in New Zealand included drug trafficking, scams, migrant exploitation and money laundering, harming individuals and families, legitimate businesses and the broader New Zealand economy, she said.
“The illicit drug trade alone is estimated to cost the country around $1.5 billion in social harm.
“The key thing I think we need to recognise is that organised crime is a business that will do anything it can to make a profit. They are agnostic about commodity – whether it’s people, whether it’s tobacco, whether it’s drugs, whether it’s money laundering, whether it’s scamming – whatever they can do to make money, they will do.
“We need to be pivoting and responding in a far more flexible and responsive way than we currently are.”
Some of the almost 14kg of methamphetamine and $360,000 of cash seized by police from a Mexican man posing as a tourist in Auckland. NZME / Supplied / NZ Police
A ministerial advisory group on organised crime has published a series of reports on the vulnerabilities in the country’s response to transnational crime, including revealing that government agencies typically avoid the risk of sharing data and work was needed to address the problem.
“Organised crime is organised, we are not”, and it should be recognised as the greatest threat to national security, the report, released earlier said.
It recommended urgent action, including one minister tasked with responsibility for the government’s organised crime response, an overhaul of strategy and a charter that would hold agencies accountable. It also warned the government that a “smaller, scaled back option” taken from its full recommendations, would “not achieve the results we need”.
What the newly announced plan includes:
“It’s about better accountability,” Costello said. “It’s about focusing our resources where they most need to be.
“Sometimes we get swallowed up with keeping busy and forget to identify what the outcomes are. We really want to get some strong outcomes, because organised crime effectively needs organised government to respond to it.”
However Aotearoa had some advantages when it came to tackling organised crime, she said.
“We are the envy when I go around the world and talk to other agencies. We don’t have state boundaries – we have one jurisdiction.
“We have one border. We have very straightforward legislation.
“We have a good judiciary, so we have that cohesion that should make us the very hardest border to penetrate and the easiest to enforce law in this space.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
