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- [00:01]
A
Last time on Australian True Crime. We spoke to Dr. Xanthi Weston about the so called hospitality wars raging in Melbourne. Firebombings and drive by shootings are rocking the city's entertainment strips along with WhatsApp threats and allegations of an online marketplace used to connect criminal gangs and young people prepared to carry out attacks for money. Today we're joined by former police member and prolific author Duncan McNab for his take on the situation around the country. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung People of the Kulin Nation. I'll tell you where we can start. A couple of days ago we spoke to Dr. Xanthi Mallet, now known as Dr. Xanthi Weston, about the hospitality wars going on in Melbourne. Nightclubs, restaurants, even a brothel shot up and firebombed and all sorts. And she was saying to us that she thinks it's a lot to do with the importation of illegal alcohol, maybe the next step up from the tobacco wars.
- [01:09]
B
It's possible, but the problem with the current brolly on Melbourne, it's 15 plus arsons or attempted arsons in the last fortnight. The problem with that is I've heard the theory about it and a lot of people have run it and there may be some case by case war story in it, but one of the commentators is saying it's about supply of vodka and I can see that in a high volume business like a nightclub, but in a brothel maybe not. And that's why I just wonder whether or not they're also different operators using similar systems.
- [01:47]
A
When you say operators, do you mean the criminal operators?
- [01:50]
B
Yeah.
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A
Right.
- [01:51]
B
Some of them might be target the high volume alcohol sales places because they know they want to get their product in there. But when you target decent pubs, you know, just nice pubs in South Melbourne, are they actually looking at and thinking, well, the kids are in the marketplace, there's a bit of a rhythm going on. Why don't we join the bandwagon and see if we can scare a few nightclubs into buying our booze. That's what gets me about this. I can't find a consistent story that works for all the attacks. Curiously, some of the other pubs, particularly the pubs I've been looking at and the restaurants, haven't got a threat, they've been terrorized. They've got the text message saying, you know, we're going to come and get you and your family. But there's been no follow through. That's what makes me a little bit curious as to. Is there one singular motive in all these attacks, or there are the different operators with slightly different agendas running? So it's extraordinarily strange, I would expect, after all this terror campaign over 14 days, that someone would have said, and this is what we want from you and what we missed in these days, it's the most important thing in crimes, as coppers will tell you, is we need the evidence. It's the jigsaw puzzle coming together. We might look at it on the table and think, oh, that's pretty cool. Yeah, this looks good, but we've actually got to get those pieces locking into each other before we've got a. Before we've got an investigation running. And it's really hard for coppers too, and those involved in it, because if they're using this, I think it's been humorously referred to as crime Tasker.
- [03:13]
A
Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Santhi was talking to us about that, finding young people to do these jobs.
- [03:18]
B
And basically we have something similar in Sydney as well, where the gangs are isolated and they use online services, crim task or other methods to put a job out to bid. You pick up the job and you do it, you get paid for it. But the critical part is that you often don't know who the client is, so it gives them that separation, which is good for business, I'd have to say. Likewise, we're hearing things from the underworld in Sydney where this is also being used. A similar sort of thing is being used to commit murders or attempt to commit murders or abductions.
- [03:52]
A
Well, the point that Xanthi raised about it, though, is that oftentimes she thinks they're getting, you know, less than stellar people to do these jobs, that there's a lot of mistakes happening, that there could be people being kidnapped, the wrong person from the wrong house and all these sorts of things. I mean, the calibre of criminal is not great when you go through crime. Tasker.
- [04:14]
B
No, they're paying peanuts and they're getting unskilled labor, to put it bluntly.
- [04:18]
A
Yes.
- [04:18]
B
But one of the. One of the things about this, too, is that the unscrupulous people who are hiring these people really don't care. Back in other parts of the world, crims were very smart in some respects in that if they do something overt, they want to make sure they don't put a target on their backs. So they were careful. They used professionals. You know, in the grand Australian history of hitmen, we We've actually had some very competent players around. And if you're dealing with kids, and it's interesting that the suggestion is a lot of the offenders are 15 plus 15 to 20 range. There's no common sense, there's no sense of the damage they could do to
- [04:52]
A
the public or themselves.
- [04:53]
B
Or themselves. And what I think the organizers may find useful about this is not only do the kids unaware of who they are, but if they are arrested, then they'll go. If they're under 18, they'll be dealt with as a juvenile, which has a lot less penalty risk than as an adult. You turn 18, different game. So these kids are also good targets for these people. And I use the word grooming very specifically. They know these criminal figures who use these kids or youths. They groom them deliberately. It's also how gangs work these days and for many, many years for that matter. You pick vulnerable, disenfranchised kids. This is more broadly kids who, you know, looking for a little bit, something a little bit different, get away from the life. Their parents have got them on them and they groom them into these organized crime gangs as well. Bike gangs are doing it now, not 20 years ago. Other organized crime gangs are doing it. And you give the kid a little bit, a little bit of something to tantalize him. Can you, can you hang on to this package for tonight? You know, here's 100 bucks. Don't tell your mom. And step by step, they get more and more involved until they're hiding guns under their bed, for example. Then they'll invite them out on a job. And all of a sudden these kids have been enrolled almost in the gangs, groomed into the gang, and they're all. Then they're getting a glimpse of a lifestyle they'd never had. They've got money in their pocket, they've got access to really nice cars, booze and drugs. It's a lifestyle you wouldn't have got in southwest Sydney or in some of the western suburbs of Melbourne. It's all of a sudden this really flash looking life. The consequences don't dawn on them.
- [06:32]
A
Can I ask you a potentially controversial question at the same time that I'm reading into all of this stuff to talk to you and Xanthi, I'm reading a book on the Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia. And it's got me thinking about similarities and differences. And also it's got me wondering what difference it's making in Australia at the moment that it seems as though the underworld is being run by Middle eastern families, whereas 20 years ago it was run by more Italian style families. I know that you're talking lately about the rules being changed, the rules changing when it comes to crime, and you're not the only one. A lot of police and former police are saying, you know, there was a time when there were very clear rules around organised crime about who could be a target and all that stuff, and those rules don't apply anymore. And I guess it's got me wondering, is that because we're dealing with a different culture now?
- [07:27]
B
I think it's a broad brush, to be honest. It's a culture that's changed. It's also a different mix of people. Yes, absolutely. But it's also more money and money drives all these things. I think we did have not different in the old days. We had rules. Well, yeah, sort of had rules, but they were pretty much governed by common sense and crims knew that what would happen if they stepped over the line. And back in those days, we had some cops as well, who would also step over the line for all the wrong reasons. I always remember when I start talking about this, I've got to stop myself, is who would have thought that In Father's Day 1984, the Comancheros and the Bandidos would go to a car park in an innocuous family gathering, you know, barbecues, sausage sizzles, swapping of parts on bike loves, and think it's a really good idea to have a barney which resulted in seven dead. So when I talk about how things were different in the old days, I do pause and remember that sometimes it wasn't quite as rosy as we think it is.
- [08:23]
A
Sometimes those neat family rules weren't followed.
- [08:26]
B
Yeah, sometimes. Yeah. A case of greed and testosterone, not a good mix. But I think, broadly speaking, the old crims that I used to know, crims I still know, look at this mob and think, you got it. They're all mad. And for a couple of reasons. The practical reasons is one, we wouldn't do this because we don't do that. We don't attack people's families. We don't chase people down the streets on a Friday night blazing away with guns. You just don't do that. But likewise, they also realize it was bad business for them. Mm. And Mil Pera, just as a curious example, and we'll get back to what you're talking about. Organized crime Security takes it back. In the years following Neil Pera Adela, motorcycle gangs went dead quiet in part because a lot of them had been Arrested, of course, coppers and broadly were thinking, well, that's that done and dusted. Outlaw motorcycle gangs, nothing to see here. They busy for a while, then nothing. What the outlaw motorcycle gangs did. As people became more involved, a couple of things happened. First of all, recruitment went through the roof. Who would have thought that mil perrob would be a recruiting poster? But it was the bizarre things about it. So numbers increased, people came out of the woodwork. That's all cool. They joined the gangs. The gangs run by some very sensible people who were also astute business people. Then started building the gangs businesses around Australia, which is why they became the biggest supplier and logistics manager of drugs in the country. Driven on the back of not heroin. That was something the old guys avoided, which is good. But methamphetamine stuff. Party drugs. Huge business and party drugs erupt. But around about the same time, the cultural changes in the gangs were happening too. Back in the old days, well, the Hell's Angels at their inception flatly refused to have anyone who was black. You had to be absolutely white. And the Bandidos had a couple of people may have been of Latino descent and one black person when they started, but. And that sort of flowed into Australia as well. It was. We weren't a multicultural gang. So basically all white blokes. Then around about late 90s or so, it started changing. The gangs actively started recruiting into. Not so much the Asian community. That's very different crime gang as well. But they started recruiting people from Middle Eastern origins, the occasional person from Southeast Asia and a lot of boys from the Pacific. Big buff, hard blokes. And that changed enormously. And you got to the situation where the Comancheros, a locally grown gang originally run by a bloke called Jock Ross who was ex British Army. The Common Sharers by the roundabout, the late 90s, early 2000s. Their boss was a bloke called Mick Howey. H A W y Mick was the new look of bike gangs came from southwest Sydney. Utterly different cultural background. Very, very much involved modernizing how the gangs recruited recruiting also from that broader diaspora in southwest Sydney. Not exactly the same in Melbourne and Brisbane as well. Howie is no longer with us. And this unfortunately, Mr. Howie got arrested for murder at Sydney airport when they decided to bash each other up on a Sunday afternoon. Bad move. And then he was coming out after he got out of prison, he was coming out of his gym, I think fitness first from memory in Rockdale or somewhere. Went the same time every day. This is how you set up a hit, by the way. To get back to a joy.
- [11:45]
A
This is how you set up your own hit, by the way, is go to the gym the same time every day.
- [11:49]
B
Yeah. At car parks in the same spot. And the gym has only got one door. So he came out of that one door and that was the end of Mick. God. But again, it was done professionally. They had the exits, they knew what his routine was, they knew where the exits were, they knew he'd come out. They also had a getaway car. You usually have two getaway cars for any aspiring criminal. First, the one you commit the crime in which you then dump nearby and then hop into the next one. So if you're picked up on CCTV or there's a witness, you've changed cars, so you've cleaned your exit up. Just smart business.
- [12:21]
A
Yeah. But again, something that your average 15 year old, 16 year old might not think about.
- [12:25]
B
They're not that sophisticated thinking. They also might think, oh, it's a bit too much trouble. So. And that's the problem we're facing with these gangs and, you know, different. Different faces, different backgrounds, but the restraint seems to have disappeared. Kids are making that worse because they don't have the common sense, judgment or experience. And they become cat and fodder for organised crime because utterly disposable if you're the gang leader. And that's why the face of our crime is changing dramatically. And what we're seeing, which scares the hell out of me, is that all these circumstances come together and we're having crimes in public endangering everybody. It's the wildness and the utter unpredictability of it. And it makes it really hard for police to get intelligence from these organized crime outfits. I mean, it's hard enough traditionally to get information out of an organised crime gang. And if you happen to be undercover in it, you're probably one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet. Hard enough in the old days when if they had even had a whiff about you being undercover or an informant, chances of you ending up dead were very high. They don't believe in beyond reasonable doubt. Not even the balance of probabilities is just a whiff. But these days too, with the rise of ethnic gangs as well, or changing the recruitment patterns, it's incredibly hard to get a source into the game because you don't look like them. You don't pass this sort of community test that gets you in the initiation rights, you don't pass those. And if you've got gangs using kids 15 to 18 or so, a police undercover is going to look pretty bloody conspicuous.
- [14:00]
A
Yeah.
- [14:01]
B
So it's a real challenge for law enforcement.
- [14:10]
A
If you need support after listening to this podcast, you can call lifeline on 131114 or contact 1800 respect on 1-800-737-732 or 1-800-respect. Org au indigenous australians can contact 13 yarn on 139276 or 13 yarn.org au.
- [14:40]
B
The producers of this podcast recognize the traditional owners of the land on which it's recorded. They pay respect to the Aboriginal elders past, present, and those emerging.