KRISSY BARRETT: Australian Federal Police Commissioner on the impact of organised crime and illicit drugs

As AFP Commissioner, I strongly believe Australia needs to have a renewed conversation about organised crime and illicit drugs.

Part of the conversation needs to be collectively louder about the dangers of illicit drug use and linking it to the organised crime violence in our communities and the impact it is having on our national security.

Australians take too many illicit drugs, and it is absurd how much money users are willing to pay for them.

Earlier this year at the Five Eyes Law Enforcement Group Annual Principals Meeting, a network that brings together top police and law enforcement agencies from Australia, the US, the UK, Canada, and New Zealand, many leaders noted it was hard to get the public’s attention when raising the dangers of illicit drug use.

However, I believe Australians may now be open to having this conversation because of the shocking shootings, including mistaken identity shootings, linked to organised crime in NSW.

It is important to note that this is not a NSW problem — it is an Australian problem, and mistaken murders at the hands of organised crime gangs have also happened in other states. Every Police Commissioner in this country has the resolve, determination and leadership to keep their communities safe and they’re working around the clock to do so.

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.

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:

1. There are more potent and dangerous synthetic drugs being trafficked throughout the world, enabling more products for organised crime to sell;
2. The convergence of state actors and organised crime, and their willingness to work together,has become a greater national security threat;
3. The pace and scale of AI and how organised crime can use AI to help evade law enforcement detection;
4. 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; and
5. 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.