Steve Symon: Ministerial Advisory Group for Organised Crime Chair on the rise in methamphetamine use

Methamphetamine use skyrocketed to its highest level last year as New Zealand struggles to keep pace. 

A ministerial advisory group on organised crime has released it's first report since being established in February.  

It says police and customs do their best, but the reality is the country is losing the fight. 

Advisory group chair Steve Symon told Mike Hosking there are high spikes in rural areas across the country. 

He says that this is evidence against the theory that gangs are dumping meth in the water to avoid police raids. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Things are not going well, I'm afraid to tell you
when it comes to the battle over organized crime and
Ministerial Advisory Groups delivered its first report. We have record
drug seizures, new tactics from gangs, new streams making cash,
a lot of fraud, migrant exploitation, illegal tobacco. The safety
and security of kiwis are said to be impacted in
unprecedented ways. The chair of this Ministerial Advisory Group is
Steve Simon. Steve, morning to.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
You, good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Does what you delivered and what you thought you might
deliver are they two different things or basically the same.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
But different Mike. I've been doing this for twenty years,
so I thought by this stage, being a prosecutor for
two decades, they'd be very little. That surprised me. But
if you look at the numbers, particularly the wastewater numbers,
and you look at the seizure numbers of how much
we're stopping coming into the country, it's pretty frightening, right.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Do you place any weight on the partial argument was
put up when those numbers came out the other day
of myth and the water that was just gang's dumping.
The police were raiding them and therefore you spike the figures.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Well, the disquity without argument is we've seen it go
up in two quarters now, the end of twenty twenty four,
the start of twenty twenty five. And also it's all
across the country, so you're seeing it unless is a
coordinated dumping by these gangs all at the same time.
What we're seeing is high spike rates in a lot
of rural areas. So all the small towns are there

(01:26):
the ones being affected.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Right, you've got a banking security expert on your panel.
Are the banks aware of the money flow? Are they
all over it or not?

Speaker 2 (01:35):
The banks are aware of money floats, their banks have
a lot of data. But certainly there's a disconnect between
the work done by the private world and also the
government agencies.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Yeah, so there's two key points, and that one's the
private and the government. So the private feel a bit
locked down and what the government are doing. Is that
easily solvable in your view or not.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
I don't think it's easily solvable, but it needs to
be solved and that's certainly something the minister has asked
us to find a way to do.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
And the other problem, and I've been around a while
and I've heard this about a million times, and that
is that no one talks to each other and one
department doesn't share. When does that get fixed?

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Yeah, you couldn't be more right. I mean, you pick
up any report and I've read a few now. They
all talk about information sharing being one of the biggest
problems for us collectively to target organized crime. And what
we need to do is have a pretty honest and
bold conversation about what information we share between government agencies

(02:36):
and what is the culture we have in terms of
encouraging organizations to share information with one another so we
can target that organized crime.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Is it culture or is it the law? Are there
barriers that they would say, Look, I can't. I would,
but I can't.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
I think, to be fair, Mike, it's both. I think
some agencies are concerned about whether they can share information
about organized crime because of concerns that they might be
breaching privacy rights. And there's a conversation to be had there,
and there's also a cultural piece. If you're working in
a government organization, you're focusing on what that organization is

(03:12):
trying to achieve, and sometimes you're not looking outside to
what information might help another organization. Target organized crime.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Is there any reason why this I don't even know
if you know the answer. Is there any reason this
is going to the Assistant Police Commission the cases Costello
as opposed to Mark Mitchell.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
This was a I think the better way to frame
it is that Minister Costello kind of took this opportunity
and ran with it. She's had some interest in this
for a long time. Of course, at having a background
herself and the police, and I know that she had
a big interest in trying to tackle the s issue
of organized crime. And that was even before these wastewater

(03:50):
numbers came out, which provided some momentum for her putting
together this group. And the reason for the group was
she didn't want another report by a government agency saying
that same thing good. She wanted us to stand outside
the independent and do something different.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
What's your vibe on the Steve as in what I'm
sure you are a very busy man with a lot
of interesting things to do in life. Do you sit
on a committee that's going nowhere or do you sit
on the committee that will affect actual change.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
I sit on a committee as a prosecutor and also
as a dad worried about what the future might be
like for my kids, and I think I will make
have a team with me which will make some robust recommendations,
and I'm hopeful that those recommendations, recommendations will be picked
up and some positive change will happen.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
Good stuff. Hopefully, talk again. Appreciate it. Steve Simon, chair
of the Ministerial Advisor, a group for organized crime.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
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