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Speaker 1: Boy, there's a hell of a report out. It's from

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Speaker 1: the Ministerial Advisory Group Targeting Transnational Organized Crime and it's

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Speaker 1: releasing its first report this morning. It shows a substantial

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Speaker 1: increase in organized crime over the past five years. It

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Speaker 1: shows surges and methamphetamine usage, which we already knew. It

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Speaker 1: shows growth in cyber fraud. So the Associate Minister of Police,

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Speaker 1: Casey Costello, is the minister responsible for the working group,

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Speaker 1: and of course sees a police minister and she joins me, Now,

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Speaker 1: good morning to you, Casey.

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Speaker 2: Good morning, how are you.

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Speaker 1: It's good. It's a bad it's a bad picture of

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Speaker 1: what is seemingly a bad land.

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Speaker 2: Yes, And that's the big part is the first report

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Speaker 2: is about build awareness about what the reality as we're

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Speaker 2: dealing with as a government. We've done a lot of

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Speaker 2: work around the public facing stuff that people see, the

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Speaker 2: game pactures, the sentence saying that this is what's in

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Speaker 2: behind driving this prime trend that we need to get

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Speaker 2: on top of. And the first part is building at

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Speaker 2: public awareness.

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Speaker 1: The report then goes on to say information sharing is

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Speaker 1: as a critical problem and you need to work on

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Speaker 1: that first. But I would say that most of the

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Speaker 1: people out and about go, yeah, well you shouldn't share

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Speaker 1: information anyway, when are we going to hit the crims?

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Speaker 2: So this is the part. It's about a step change

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Speaker 2: in the way we approach. We have always operated in

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Speaker 2: silos and our enforcement agencies we work cooperatively at the

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Speaker 2: ground level. We haven't been very good at a high

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Speaker 2: level allowing these levers to be pulled. And that's the part.

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Speaker 2: We have seen a change. You saw media yesterday about

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Speaker 2: the increase of work that I idea doing. We are

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Speaker 2: seeing a change in that environment and we just know

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Speaker 2: that we can do more and it's about being clear

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Speaker 2: about what it is we're trying to do.

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Speaker 1: And the one thing we're getting a lot of headlines

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Speaker 1: on because of the waste water and because of the

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Speaker 1: arrest is meth usage that has absolutely skyrocketed. It's doubled

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Speaker 1: over the year, and the report shows that we used

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Speaker 1: to stop fifty five catograms of metha year decade on,

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Speaker 1: we're now stopping ninety kilograms of week. You are also

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Speaker 1: the Minister for Customs. Does this concern you? Is our

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Speaker 1: border security working? Can you actually harden this up?

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Speaker 2: Well, the good news in that story is that nearly

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Speaker 2: half of the drugs we're stopping. We're stopping outside of

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Speaker 2: our border, so they're not even on New Zealand shores

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Speaker 2: when we get it. So that shows our international relationships,

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Speaker 2: our intelligence sharing across the world is really good, and

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Speaker 2: we're targeting supply chains well. But we can do more

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Speaker 2: and that there's a whole range of leaders that I

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Speaker 2: know we can poll. I started this work when we

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Speaker 2: first started talking about what we can do. We started

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Speaker 2: this work and Cabinet signed us off in November last year.

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Speaker 2: So we were gearing up for this for some time

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Speaker 2: and now we're having the rubber hitting the road.

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Speaker 1: Okay, well, when will the rubber hit the road? Because

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Speaker 1: you know what everyone has said and even this report say,

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Speaker 1: is that successive government's policies failures have been rearranging the

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Speaker 1: deck chairs on the Titanic. So when can you give

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Speaker 1: us a timeline of when you might actually make some

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Speaker 1: bold changes to legislation that fights the surge in organized crime.

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Speaker 2: The big thing is that we want to be making

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Speaker 2: sure we're doing the right thing. That's why we've set

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Speaker 2: up this group of experts that work operationally, understand what

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Speaker 2: it's like in the field, and know what we can

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Speaker 2: do better. This isn't about policy people writing an action plan.

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Speaker 2: So each month's report will be delivered from the Advisory

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Speaker 2: Group with specific actions that they recommend the government does that.

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Speaker 2: The first report was just setting the scene, making sure

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Speaker 2: people understand the gravity of the situation we're dealing with.

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Speaker 2: And each month up until the final report in September,

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Speaker 2: we will be delivering on specific actions that this government

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Speaker 2: can do to move fast.

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Speaker 1: So will we get an action plan this year?

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Speaker 2: That this is more than an action plan, This is

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Speaker 2: specific actions we will do each month that.

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Speaker 1: The group will no I mean I mean by the

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Speaker 1: bold legislation, the actually confronting the problem, not actually identifying

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Speaker 1: the pro but confronting the problem. Will you confront the

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Speaker 1: problem this year?

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Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, That's what I'm saying. Each month there will

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Speaker 2: be things that we will be doing. Specific actions we

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Speaker 2: will be doing around how the agencies work closer together,

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Speaker 2: breaking down those barriers around information sharing, how we target

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Speaker 2: the money better, how we disrupt and prevent our borders

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Speaker 2: from being compromised. We as a nation should be the

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Speaker 2: very best in the world doing this. We have one border,

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Speaker 2: one enforcement agency, one justice system, and I know we

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Speaker 2: can do Betterkatie.

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Speaker 1: I thank you so very very much. For more from

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Speaker 1: earlier edition with Ryan Bridge, Listen live to News Talks

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Speaker 1: it Be from five am weekdays, or follow the podcast

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Speaker 1: on iHeartRadio