The Australian federal police commissioner has urged his Five Eyes counterparts to ramp up the fight against organised crime, declaring the pandemic has fuelled “the destabilisation of the world order”.
Reece Kershaw issued a rallying call for closer coordination on law enforcement as he addressed colleagues from the US, Canada, the UK and New Zealand, who have been visiting Australia for talks since Monday.
Australia’s new attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, was in attendance at an event in New South Wales on Wednesday evening to hear Kershaw warn that “state actors and citizens from some nations are using our countries at the expense of our sovereignty and economies”.
Kershaw told the gathering that federal crime in Australia was on the rise, and one of the contributors to the increase was “the long shadow of organised crime and state aggression”.
The Five Eyes is a longstanding intelligence-sharing arrangement that gained momentum during the cold war, but it has also spawned other groupings including one focused on law enforcement.
Kershaw is the current chair of the Five Eyes Law Enforcement Group, which was created in 2013. He said this grouping had “never been more important”.
“That is because the pandemic has contributed to the destabilisation of the world order, global instability is helping to fuel and embolden organised crime, [and] criminals have weaponised technology and have become ruthlessly efficient at finding victims,” Kershaw said.
In remarks distributed to media by the AFP, he argued the world had “never been smaller” and criminals were “no longer bound by, or deterred by, state borders”.
The AFP commissioner said the Five Eyes Law Enforcement Group must be “a law enforcement shape shifter – one that is agile and unpredictable to organised crime”.
Kershaw said the group could be “the megaphone needed to capture the attention of key stakeholders, and do it in a way that has not been done before”.
He argued the group could “come into its own by supercharging the technology and innovation needed to identify and disrupt offenders wherever they are in the world”.
Kershaw cited Operation Ironside as an example of “how devastatingly effective we can be when we work together”.
“While we will always need the muscle to kick down the door, our brains’ trust – like our innovators and our tech pioneers – are among the future of law enforcement,” he said.
US agencies represented at the meetings in Australia this week include the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Other agencies attending the talks include the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency, the UK Met Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, NZ Police, the AFP and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission.
Kershaw implored his colleagues to “unite the fight against organised criminals who are advancing the interests of their homeland at the expense of our countries”.
“The largest syndicate in the world is us – law enforcement. Our ability to immobilise serious crime is limited only by our collective will,” he said.
He said he hoped the meeting could “find common ground to operationalise our common goals”.
Kershaw said geopolitics and regional instability continued to influence the AFP’s own strategic priorities: countering terrorism, espionage and foreign interference; child exploitation; cyber; fraud; and transnational serious organised crime.
He said the traditional definition of a national security threat was being rewritten because of the very nature and impact of organised crime.
The AFP commissioner argued illicit drug production and trafficking could affect regional security, food security and the stability of governments.
He said the Five Eyes could not “ignore that some countries are producing precursors at an eye-watering scale” and that some countries were “turning a blind eye to the proceeds of crime washing through their economies”.
While Kershaw did not name any country or region in his speech, a UN agency has previously described Asia as the biggest source and market for precursor chemicals used to make illicit drugs.
The new prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is placing the AFP within the attorney general’s portfolio instead of the vast home affairs portfolio as part of a shake-up of the bureaucracy.
Kershaw acknowledged Dreyfus in his speech: “Congratulations on your appointment. You have only been in this role for a week and despite your busy schedule, you have joined us tonight. We are very grateful for your time.”
