Australia must reopen the national debate on organised crime and illicit drug use, according to AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett.
That discussion, she argues, needs to more clearly connect the risks of illegal drug consumption with the organised crime violence unfolding in communities and the broader threat it poses to national security.
Australians consume too many illicit drugs, Barrett said, while users are prepared to pay staggering sums that ultimately fuel criminal networks.
At the Five Eyes Law Enforcement Group Annual Principals Meeting earlier this year, senior officials from Australia, the United States, Britain, Canada and New Zealand acknowledged the difficulty of capturing public attention when warning about the harms tied to illicit drug use.
But Barrett said the recent spate of disturbing shootings in NSW, including attacks involving mistaken identity that have been linked to organised crime, may have made Australians more willing to confront the issue.
She stressed that the crisis is not confined to NSW. Organised crime-related cases of mistaken murder have also occurred in other states, making it a national problem.
Police commissioners across Australia have the determination, leadership and resolve to protect their communities, Barrett said, and are working continuously toward that goal.
Yet the central challenge remains demand: Australia’s heavy appetite for illicit drugs continues to bankroll criminal groups.
AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett has delivered a blunt warning to Australians about illicit drugs and organised crime.
She pointed to the case of former Melbourne underworld figure Kaz Hamad, who received a life sentence in Iraq for drug trafficking.
These shootings and violence are often the result of organised crime groups onshore or overseas fighting for dominance and power because of the obscene profits they are making from illicit drugs in Australia.
They are rolling in dirty cash and they are willing to kill each other and anyone who gets in the way.
I want to be clear, the criminals who pull the trigger, or align themselves with organised crime by trafficking illicit drugs to Australia, are responsible for the violence and shootings in our suburbs.
And it is obvious they do not care if innocent people are in the crosshairs.
And these innocent people are just everyday people, and could be your mum or dad, your neighbour or the person who makes your latte in the morning.
My posture is not to be confused with criticisms of any individual, policies or decisions, it is firmly about injecting some energy and focus on what the community needs to know and understand about organised crime.
Most crime gangs impacting on Australia are commodity agnostic and will be drawn to products that make them obscene profits.
Many of the crime gangs responsible for cocaine, methamphetamine or heroin trafficking are also responsible for illicit tobacco importations.
Hamad was accused of being one of the key orchestrators of Melbourne’s tobacco wars, which were linked to a series of firebombings around the city as criminal groups fought for control of the billion-dollar illicit market
As well as the violence in our suburbs, there are other pressing reasons to have a renewed debate about illicit drug use and organised crime; including:
- There are more potent and dangerous synthetic drugs being trafficked throughout the world, enabling more products for organised crime to sell;
- The convergence of state actors and organised crime, and their willingness to work together, has become a greater national security threat;
- The pace and scale of AI and how organised crime can use AI to help evade law enforcement detection;
- In the criminal gig economy, onshore and offshore crime gangs are tasking out their criminal reprisals to Australian youth, some just in their early teens. This new pipeline of young offenders has little impulse control and can be even more reckless than other older criminals.
- The growing challenge of illicit commodities being sent to and through the Pacific
When I became Commissioner in October 2025, I set five new priorities: defending Australia’s domestic security and our region (this includes safeguarding the nation from terrorism, protecting our designated airports and sites of significance plus ramping up our role in the security requirements for the AUKUS submarines); protecting vulnerable communities (such as targeting predators, manipulators and those who radicalise our kids); future-proofing the AFP workforce; investing in science and technology-led capability and supercharging global operations.
Supercharging global operations is how the AFP is working with international partners to target offshore offenders and, where possible, bring them to justice, including those who traffic poison to our country.
Where some countries will not extradite their own citizens, the AFP is providing intelligence and evidence to those countries to prosecute their citizens in their own countries. They are doing this because generally a crook in one country is an offender in another.
There are several examples of our success, and recently we have seen this happen in Iraq, with the conviction of Kaz Hamad.
It also means we focus on stopping crime in source countries. Preventing illicit drugs from leaving another country is faster, cheaper and safer. I will have more to say about this soon.
Over many years as a police officer, I have heard too many times that the war on drugs never worked.
But the issue is that this is a battle where we can never raise the white flag.
Our first line of defence must always be to educate the community about the harms of illicit substances and to warn them not to take them.
If we work together to reduce demand, support people before harm escalates and refuse to normalise illicit drug use, we can make our families safer, debilitate organised crime and protect our communities.
I am up for the conversation we need to have, but it requires all of society to take part and understand what is at stake.
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