The Pacific’s increasingly aggressive billion-dollar drug cartels are at the centre of the PM’s Samoa and Tonga visit, writes Catherine McGregor in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.
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PMs move on from matai fuss
Christopher Luxon spent Monday in Samoa signing new policing deals aimed at fighting the transnational cartels that are moving an increasing amount of cocaine and methamphetamine toward New Zealand and Australia. As we covered in yesterday’s Bulletin, Luxon’s visit got off to a diplomatically awkward start when his Samoan counterpart told a local radio programme that New Zealand’s high commissioner had specifically requested the matai honour. The claim was quickly denied; the Samoan government confirmed the bestowal was a traditional courtesy, and the ceremony proceeded smoothly, as reported by Stuff’s Anneke Smith under the delightful headline ‘Prime Minister gets Samoan chief title he didn’t ask for’. He is the sixth New Zealand prime minister to receive a matai while in office.
Alongside the drug crime issue, the wider agenda for the trip includes the Iran war’s effect on Pacific fuel supply chains, a question about New Zealand’s visa settings for Pacific visitors, and the unresolved matter of compensation for the Royal NZ Navy ship Manawanui which sank last year spilling hundreds of thousands of litres of diesel and oil into the ocean. RNZ’s Johnny Blades reports that despite Luxon describing New Zealand’s $6 million payment as “full and final settlement”, the Samoan prime minister indicated discussions were ongoing.
A high-powered delegation
As the Herald’s Julia Gabel notes, the seriousness with which the government views the Pacific organised crime problem is evident from who made the trip: alongside Luxon came police minister Mark Mitchell, police commissioner Richard Chambers, and Customs chief executive Christine Stevenson. In Apia, New Zealand and Samoa signed agreements allowing five NZ police officers to embed in the Samoan force and enabling rapid intelligence-sharing between the two countries. “Whether it’s in Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, New Zealand, Australia, we are now a superhighway for drugs, particularly out of South America,” Luxon said. “Those criminal gangs will not give up.”
The problem has been worsening for several reasons, Anneke Smith writes in The Post: drug cartels from the Americas and Asia are increasing their foothold, and the arrival of deportees from Australia, NZ and the US has helped establish chapters of gangs including the Rebels, Mongrel Mob and Comancheros across Pacific nations. Interception is a persistent challenge in the Pacific’s vast ocean expanse; cartels have even been known to deploy submarines to move product.
Four tonnes of cocaine
The scale of the problem was thrown into sharp relief last month, when NZ worked with French and US authorities to intercept an incredible 4.24 tonnes of cocaine near French Polynesia. That’s an amount worth as much as $1.5 billion on NZ streets, 1News’ Barbara Dreaver reports. Customs told 1News the drugs were destined for New Zealand – but the shipment contained enough cocaine to feed this country’s market for nine years, making it clear that NZ was not the final destination. Transnational crime expert Jose Sousa-Santos spelled out the logic: “What the cartels have realised is we have shorelines which are not patrolled… [the shipment] would have come to New Zealand then be sent on to Australia where it would not be designated as coming from a high risk country.”
A chilling warning
Enormous though it was, the French Polynesia bust was just the tip of the iceberg. Dreaver reports that it represented only a third of the 12 tonnes of narcotics seized across Fiji and French Polynesia over three weeks in February; experts warn much more is getting through. As Jared Savage reported in the Herald, a ministerial advisory group warned last year that New Zealand was “losing the fight” against transnational crime, with methamphetamine consumption more than doubling in 2024 to its highest recorded levels.
The group’s most alarming assessment of the situation in the Pacific is worth quoting directly. “There is a real risk the nurturing corruption environment will lead to organised crime groups becoming entrenched and dominating all aspects of society, to the point where it becomes impossible to stop a series of narco-states being established on New Zealand’s doorstep,” the group wrote. “New Zealand, therefore, not only has a moral obligation to assist its Pacific neighbours, but a very practical reason to do so.”
