The spike in drug shipments bedevilling NZ and the Pacific

2026-03-18 - 16:03

It was a spectacular bust with spectacular images – but not entirely satisfying consequences. In February, the French navy seized over four tonnes of cocaine from a fishing vessel off the coast of French Polynesia as it was allegedly making its way to Australia. As the ship was in international waters, the navy ultimately let it go, but only after dumping the drugs into the ocean depths. Nonetheless, it was a striking example of a major issue bedevilling the nations of the Pacific, New Zealand included – how to tackle the surge in transnational crime and the flow of hard drugs into the region. In Samoa, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon oversaw the signing of new policing and Customs cooperation agreements to help deal with drug traffickers. In Tonga he inked a deal to expand the Pacific detector dog programme, which brings drug sniffing dogs and associated expertise from New Zealand, later posing next to cars and a motorbike that were seized from the Comancheros gang in a Tongan police operation. Luxon said the Pacific had become a “superhighway for drugs”, while Samoa’s prime minister La’aulialemalietoa Leuatea Schmidt expressed concern at “the fast-paced problem of illegal drugs crossing our borders” and Tonga’s leader Lord Fatafehi Fakafānua said his government wanted to introduce wastewater testing to better understand the scale of the problem. “Tonga is a maritime country: We have 99.9 percent water, and so being aware of what’s happening in our shores is important for the security of our nation,” Fakafānua said. José Sousa-Santos, the head of the University of Canterbury’s Pacific Regional Security Hub, told Newsroom that Pacific nations had for decades “been treated by traffickers and, at times, by international partners, as passive and vulnerable transit zones: remote, porous, lightly policed, and reliant on externally driven intelligence and enforcement”. “Vast maritime zones, porous coastlines, informal jetties, and limited patrol capacity remain defining features of the region. hese challenges are compounded by economic pressures in coastal communities and the tyranny of distance confronting enforcement agencies.” To help keep tabs on those vast swathes of ocean, the Ministry of Transport has paid for the Samoan and Tongan governments to access Kiwi company Starboard Maritime Intelligence’s data platform, which tracks ‘dark vessels’ and other suspicious ships moving through the world’s waters. Starboard’s chief executive Trent Fulcher said drug shipments coming from South America through the Pacific to New Zealand and Australia had been rising for over a decade. Smugglers had begun to deploy more sophisticated technologies, like ‘narco subs’ to move shipments underwater, while the volume had spiked in recent years: “A few years ago, it was hundreds of kilograms – now it’s tonnes.” Fulcher’s company had been monitoring the vessel that was intercepted by the French navy, which was currently off the coast of Brisbane; “Trying to figure out where to go, because they can’t really go home – I’m sure the cartels wouldn’t be excited to have them back,” he wryly noted. Among those on the Pacific trip was Police Commissioner Richard Chambers, who told Newsroom he was visiting the region early and often in his term given the threat posed by transnational crime was the top priority of all Pacific police chiefs. There were already two NZ Police staff in Samoa, but four more would soon join them after a request from the country’s police commissioner, while New Zealand was ramping up its presence in other countries. The more than four tonnes of cocaine seized and dumped by the French navy earlier this year. Photo: NZ Customs “The thing with organised crime, and particularly with activity in the Pacific, unless we work together as a set of law enforcement agencies, no one country is going to be able to make a difference on its own,” Chambers said. The drug cartels operating in South America were taking advantage of the Pacific waterways to move their product to New Zealand and Australia (among other target markets), presenting an opportunity to cut them off before they could get beyond the border. Along with technology and violence, the cartels were able to get their drugs into the region through a third, less-easily discussed tool – corruption. “We have to be really open to those hard discussions, because it’s officials, whether those are in police or Customs or baggage handlers, it’s others in positions of influence that can become targets for corruption to allow those criminal networks to get their product through ... “Corruption undermines the integrity of a nation and all the things that we are proud of as Kiwis, and the Pacific nations are proud of as well – corruption can undermine all of that and what we stand for and who we stand for.” Chambers had asked the issue to be high on the agenda at a Pacific police chiefs summit in May “so that we can, in a very open and transparent way, talk about the risk that it presents to all of us”. The Government’s ministerial advisory group on transnational crime has not minced words either, warning in a report last year of the Pacific: “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 comes impossible to stop a series of narco-states being established on New Zealand’s doorstep.” A stretch into hyperbole? Not in Chambers’ eyes. Police Commissioner Richard Chambers (centre) says law enforcement must speak more openly about the risks of corruption. Photo: Sam Sachdeva “My experience in working with Interpol is that we were operating in countries where organised crime has got out of control, and criminal networks have more influence in some places about what goes on in some countries than law enforcement or the government. “Some of that language is very real, [but] unless we talk about it, and it’s in its raw form ... we’re diluting the threat and perhaps not shining the spotlight on it in a way that needs to be as blunt as it’s been.” New Zealand is far from the only country to desire deepened policing ties with the Pacific, as increasing Great Power competition has at times proved contentious. While it was the Solomon Islands’ 2022 security deal with China that caused the greatest outcry, a bilateral agreement with Samoa the same year included some commitments for Beijing to provide police training. Sousa-Santos said strategic competition in the Pacific had galvanised greater security sector engagement, more partners and opportunities for capacity development – but had also highlighted “those states who utilise proxies and disruptors such as transnational criminal actors as a means for seeking influence and presence in the Pacific”. Chambers said it was not for him to interfere with such deals between Pacific nations and other countries, but reiterated politicians’ previous remarks that New Zealand wanted to be “the partner of choice”. “For many decades, Pacific nations have been supported by us – we don’t want that to change, because if we get our settings right in the Pacific when it comes to our presence and the things that we support those nations with, the reality is it’s good for the entire region.”