Speaker 1: You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News Talks 'DB.
Speaker 2: They are going to be cracking down on illegal drugs
Speaker 2: entering the country. Well, I mean they're always cracking down
Speaker 2: on it, but anyway, starting with customs. So Customs will
Speaker 2: get an additional thirty five million to help combat the
Speaker 2: rising rate of organized crime groups who are bringing illicit
Speaker 2: drugs into the country, and it'll provide Customs with the
Speaker 2: funding that needs from sixty more roles. Anyway. To discuss that,
Speaker 2: former Customs Minister Morris Williamson is joining us. Good afternoon,
Speaker 2: Good afternoon, Thank you. Thank you for being available a
Speaker 2: little earlier for us. Now you've been in this role before.
Speaker 2: Thirty five million and new funding for Customs. What's your reaction.
Speaker 2: Is it enough?
Speaker 3: It's a good start. It's never enough, because I can
Speaker 3: tell you back during my time as minister, and I
Speaker 3: started in two thousand and eight, so that's what about
Speaker 3: fifteen years ago or so or more, the biggest thing
Speaker 3: across the border then was effordream and pseudo ef adrine,
Speaker 3: So they were the precursors and all of the PA
Speaker 3: was actually being cooked here. And I remember talking to
Speaker 3: my Aussie counterpart minister, And I said, you know, I've
Speaker 3: got this big flood of efadrine and pseudo efadrine pouring
Speaker 3: in from China. And he said what And I said
Speaker 3: efadren and he said, I don't even what you're talking about.
Speaker 3: And I said, it's used to make methan Phedomi said,
Speaker 3: I said, you don't have it. He said no, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: He said, you know, cocaine, heroine and all sorts of
Speaker 3: that huge here at the border. But I don't even
Speaker 3: think we rank it. But it certainly changed over the
Speaker 3: few years. And now what you can't really compare is
Speaker 3: the statistics. I've seen a whole lot of statistics that
Speaker 3: say a huge amount more methan fhetamine is getting over
Speaker 3: the border than it used to. But now I don't
Speaker 3: believe there's any effidrine or pseudo EFFI dreams coming over
Speaker 3: the border. So it's all coming in final product. So
Speaker 3: it's not to say that there's more actually in the marketplace,
Speaker 3: although there clearly is. It's to say that it's now
Speaker 3: all coming as a fire product rather than just the
Speaker 3: pseudoverdreen coming in and then being made into p.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, because I mean it still amazes me
Speaker 2: that we can test the water and find out how
Speaker 2: much the consumption's gone up, which is through the roof.
Speaker 3: Isn't it that the laugh I had from one of
Speaker 3: the officials the other day He said to me that
Speaker 3: we've even been able to detect some urine in the
Speaker 3: water in Queenstown.
Speaker 2: I guess how much of a difference do you think
Speaker 2: this will make this extra money? Because it's one thing
Speaker 2: to spend the money, it's another thing to see the difference.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I think it will make a difference because
Speaker 3: you get a real multiplying factor for every additional piece
Speaker 3: of intelligence that you have in the network. You see,
Speaker 3: you don't really make the busts by finding the stuff
Speaker 3: by opening up a box, rummaging through and AlOH wats this?
Speaker 3: You make most of the busts through intelligence. You know,
Speaker 3: stuff about where was the origin of the product that
Speaker 3: it come in a container? Are they? Are they a
Speaker 3: reputable supplier company that's checked everything? And I can tell
Speaker 3: you the vast bulk of what customs are decepted during
Speaker 3: my time as minister, and as minister for about eight years,
Speaker 3: I can tell you the vast bulk of it is
Speaker 3: they had pretty much clues and eyes on the system
Speaker 3: before the stuff even arrived.
Speaker 2: Is the fact that we are so we have custom
Speaker 2: says it's now stopping nearly ninety kilos of meth per week.
Speaker 2: Oh my godness, it's said so much, isn't it anyway?
Speaker 2: Compared for fifty five kilos about ten years ago?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Does this suggest that the problem is a lot bigger?
Speaker 2: Or are we just getting better at detecting it all?
Speaker 3: We just correct? Let me just correct your figure because
Speaker 3: I'll show you how much bigger it is. You said
Speaker 3: ninety kilos a week, correct, But what you didn't say
Speaker 3: was for the fifty five in twenty fourteen, was for
Speaker 3: the entire year?
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. And so oh yes, sorry, sorry I
Speaker 2: missed that word. It's actually in front of me and
Speaker 2: I just misread my notes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, eighty five, So the moltiplying factor is eighty five
Speaker 3: times the level, not not just on double.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for picking me up on that. Well,
Speaker 2: that's obviously a massive, much bigger problem.
Speaker 3: It can't mean's huge, it's massively huge. And the damage
Speaker 3: it's doing, I mean it's breaking families. Some of the
Speaker 3: family violent stats that have gone through the roof you know.
Speaker 3: It's people always used to get stuck into me. Some
Speaker 3: of the more lefty liberals used to say, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: why are you making such a fuss about this stuff.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a it's a victimless crime. It is
Speaker 3: not the damage that it does to our society. When
Speaker 3: this gets in, it wrecks families, It absolutely creates just
Speaker 3: dreadful consequences for our society, and I would love to
Speaker 3: find a way of getting on top of it. When
Speaker 3: I went to the States once, it is another little
Speaker 3: funny story. I sat with their secretary of border security
Speaker 3: and I said to her, where's your biggest inflow of drugs?
Speaker 3: I said, is it by air or by sea? And
Speaker 3: she said, I said it, She said neither. I said
Speaker 3: what she said, it's all ours comes in via land,
Speaker 3: And I went, good God, I hadn't thought of that,
Speaker 3: because we don't have land, so only ours come in
Speaker 3: via the port. The poets of the seaports. But in
Speaker 3: America that what's flying over the border and drones and
Speaker 3: catapult They were even firing catapults, big big catapults with
Speaker 3: bags of drugs, firing them at the border, and there
Speaker 3: were people on the other side waiting for them to
Speaker 3: come flying over stick them in e vents. So this
Speaker 3: is a serious problem, massive amount of money involved. What
Speaker 3: I thought was interesting is how the average prices have dropped.
Speaker 3: It was, in my time, a good sign. That meant,
Speaker 3: you know, that it was we were sorry. It was
Speaker 3: the way round of prices were going up. It meant
Speaker 3: we were getting on top of it. If prices are
Speaker 3: dropping like they are, that suggests there's a real flood
Speaker 3: coming across the border.
Speaker 2: Well that's the thing. Do you think we're just chasing
Speaker 2: our tails? That simply we're having to spend this money
Speaker 2: just to try and make a small densinet. Really you
Speaker 2: actually think this is going to make a real difference.
Speaker 3: I think it'll make a difference. I'd be very reluctant
Speaker 3: to say it'll make a real difference because we're dealing
Speaker 3: with really big organized crime here. We're talking with organizations
Speaker 3: who have funds sometimes bigger than a small country's GDP,
Speaker 3: and they have abilities to do things in the transport
Speaker 3: and other networks where it is really hard. You know,
Speaker 3: there have been things where children's clothing has come through
Speaker 3: all looking absolutely pristine, and then they've suddenly found that
Speaker 3: the clothing was sort of drenched in meth, then waited
Speaker 3: to dry put into the packs. And if you then
Speaker 3: unmelted all after you've put it into a cooker, all
Speaker 3: the meth comes back and you've got a big supply.
Speaker 3: So how do you detect that? You know, sometimes even
Speaker 3: the dogs can't pick it. So it's one of these journeys,
Speaker 3: not a destination. And I'm pleased to congratulate Casey Costello
Speaker 3: for having got some money when times are so tight.
Speaker 3: I mean I used to go to the Minister of
Speaker 3: Finance every now and then for more money for this
Speaker 3: and normally I would always get it because as our
Speaker 3: economy was in a reasonably good shape and positive sort
Speaker 3: of out. So she's got a really difficult balance because
Speaker 3: every minister going, you know, from the Minister of Health
Speaker 3: on down and desperate to get more funding into their balance,
Speaker 3: into their balances.
Speaker 2: I don't know what would you ever have in your
Speaker 2: job formerly as the Minister of Customs, know what the
Speaker 2: cost to the country is of this meth epidemic.
Speaker 3: We used to get what was called the harm Index,
Speaker 3: which basically tried to quantify what it was doing in
Speaker 3: terms of, you know, the serious health consequences, but serious
Speaker 3: dislocations of families and beatings and and shocking, you know,
Speaker 3: breakdown of family units and children not you know, having
Speaker 3: parents live that were in a sort of a mood
Speaker 3: that could even know how to make a sandwich for
Speaker 3: their lunch. Actually now getting into school lunches.
Speaker 2: But we'll be getting we'll be getting if Mark Mitchell
Speaker 2: doesn't front up, we'll be getting into that next time.
Speaker 3: So look, it's one of these things you have got
Speaker 3: no option. You've got no option but to try to
Speaker 3: do it. And the more that you can do with intelligence,
Speaker 3: and I think AI is now starting to faster. Its
Speaker 3: little head has been really useful for if you've given
Speaker 3: fifty thousand million data points, you just look at it.
Speaker 3: So I can't even tell that if AI can do
Speaker 3: a sweepover at several several times, it can have you
Speaker 3: thought about this that coming from there, that container's picked
Speaker 3: up there, there's a common sort of thread here, and
Speaker 3: your intelligence people within customs can say, right, we need
Speaker 3: to have a look at that. And I think that
Speaker 3: will help. But I don't want to be a sort
Speaker 3: of a Johnny Kill the Party sort of guy. But
Speaker 3: I think this stuff is always going to be present
Speaker 3: in it. Well, it's because you make such a profit
Speaker 3: out of it, You make such phenomenal sums of money.
Speaker 2: Well here's the thing. Where else do we need to
Speaker 2: move legislatively too? Because are we a soft touch New Zealand?
Speaker 2: Do we need to have some more stringent sort of
Speaker 2: measures and punishments for people dealing on this stuff?
Speaker 3: Well, we do need to look at that. Always. There
Speaker 3: are multitude multi factors that you're going to look at.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I always thought was a
Speaker 3: bit sort of blood curdling was we were catching mules
Speaker 3: coming in from China, very young, sometimes even university students
Speaker 3: who were told you can pay for your entire university
Speaker 3: education five thousand times over if you have a pack
Speaker 3: of this in your luggage. And those who got through
Speaker 3: could never believe how much money they had for the
Speaker 3: rest of their life. But the ones that didn't get through,
Speaker 3: we put in jail for a reasonably short period of time.
Speaker 3: They lived in better quality digs than they lived in
Speaker 3: back home in the slums, and they got better food
Speaker 3: than they had, and then finally we put them on
Speaker 3: an aeroplane at our expense to take them home. So
Speaker 3: if you think about the consequences they are not that.
Speaker 3: I don't know how much that's changed. But I always
Speaker 3: used to say, in fact, if I was a young
Speaker 3: kid from the slums and had no future whatsoever, this
Speaker 3: would look terribly attractive. So there has to be some
Speaker 3: legislative change. The penalties do have to be realistic so
Speaker 3: that they try to deter people from doing it. But
Speaker 3: we had stuff magnetically stuck to the hull of ships.
Speaker 3: We had to die. I went down with the divers
Speaker 3: one night and they were diving on the base of
Speaker 3: a ship and they found some big sort of like
Speaker 3: limpid mind stuck against it. When they pulled them off,
Speaker 3: the pea was all stuck in them. It's just the reason,
Speaker 3: it's all it's going to be there is. It's just
Speaker 3: you don't make thousands of dollars, you don't make millions.
Speaker 3: You make tens of millions by being in this trade.
Speaker 3: And I just hope that we just keep on keeping
Speaker 3: on and good on to Casey Costello, and hopefully the
Speaker 3: Ministry of Finance will always keep giving of the funding
Speaker 3: that's necessary.
Speaker 2: Excellent, Hey, Maris, I really appreciate your time this afternoon
Speaker 2: into the rest of the day.
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