Casey Costello: Associate Police Minister on the report into organised crime in New Zealand

New Zealand faces significant obstacles to take down organised crime groups. 

A ministerial advisory group's first report reveals a sobering reality the country is losing the fight, and claims bold changes are needed. 

It says a significant spike in methamphetamine use last year was dire. 

Associate Police Minister Casey Costello told Andrew Dickens a series of reports will provide practical advice over the next six months. 

She says there will be specific actions released each month - including how agencies could work more closely together and breaking down barriers about information sharing. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Boy, there's a hell of a report out. It's from
the Ministerial Advisory Group Targeting Transnational Organized Crime and it's
releasing its first report this morning. It shows a substantial
increase in organized crime over the past five years. It
shows surges and methamphetamine usage, which we already knew. It
shows growth in cyber fraud. So the Associate Minister of Police,

(00:23):
Casey Costello, is the minister responsible for the working group,
and of course sees a police minister and she joins me, Now,
good morning to you, Casey.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Good morning, how are you.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
It's good. It's a bad it's a bad picture of
what is seemingly a bad land.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yes, And that's the big part is the first report
is about build awareness about what the reality as we're
dealing with as a government. We've done a lot of
work around the public facing stuff that people see, the
game pactures, the sentence saying that this is what's in
behind driving this prime trend that we need to get
on top of. And the first part is building at

(01:01):
public awareness.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
The report then goes on to say information sharing is
as a critical problem and you need to work on
that first. But I would say that most of the
people out and about go, yeah, well you shouldn't share
information anyway, when are we going to hit the crims?

Speaker 2 (01:15):
So this is the part. It's about a step change
in the way we approach. We have always operated in
silos and our enforcement agencies we work cooperatively at the
ground level. We haven't been very good at a high
level allowing these levers to be pulled. And that's the part.
We have seen a change. You saw media yesterday about

(01:37):
the increase of work that I idea doing. We are
seeing a change in that environment and we just know
that we can do more and it's about being clear
about what it is we're trying to do.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
And the one thing we're getting a lot of headlines
on because of the waste water and because of the
arrest is meth usage that has absolutely skyrocketed. It's doubled
over the year, and the report shows that we used
to stop fifty five catograms of metha year decade on,
we're now stopping ninety kilograms of week. You are also
the Minister for Customs. Does this concern you? Is our

(02:09):
border security working? Can you actually harden this up?

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Well, the good news in that story is that nearly
half of the drugs we're stopping. We're stopping outside of
our border, so they're not even on New Zealand shores
when we get it. So that shows our international relationships,
our intelligence sharing across the world is really good, and
we're targeting supply chains well. But we can do more
and that there's a whole range of leaders that I

(02:35):
know we can poll. I started this work when we
first started talking about what we can do. We started
this work and Cabinet signed us off in November last year.
So we were gearing up for this for some time
and now we're having the rubber hitting the road.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Okay, well, when will the rubber hit the road? Because
you know what everyone has said and even this report say,
is that successive government's policies failures have been rearranging the
deck chairs on the Titanic. So when can you give
us a timeline of when you might actually make some
bold changes to legislation that fights the surge in organized crime.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
The big thing is that we want to be making
sure we're doing the right thing. That's why we've set
up this group of experts that work operationally, understand what
it's like in the field, and know what we can
do better. This isn't about policy people writing an action plan.
So each month's report will be delivered from the Advisory
Group with specific actions that they recommend the government does that.

(03:31):
The first report was just setting the scene, making sure
people understand the gravity of the situation we're dealing with.
And each month up until the final report in September,
we will be delivering on specific actions that this government
can do to move fast.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
So will we get an action plan this year?

Speaker 2 (03:47):
That this is more than an action plan, This is
specific actions we will do each month that.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
The group will no I mean I mean by the
bold legislation, the actually confronting the problem, not actually identifying
the pro but confronting the problem. Will you confront the
problem this year?

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Yes, absolutely, That's what I'm saying. Each month there will
be things that we will be doing. Specific actions we
will be doing around how the agencies work closer together,
breaking down those barriers around information sharing, how we target
the money better, how we disrupt and prevent our borders
from being compromised. We as a nation should be the
very best in the world doing this. We have one border,

(04:26):
one enforcement agency, one justice system, and I know we
can do Betterkatie.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
I thank you so very very much. For more from
earlier edition with Ryan Bridge, Listen live to News Talks
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