Photo / Julia GabelNew Zealand’s Police Commissioner Richard Chambers, Police Minister Mark Mitchell and Minister for Pacific Peoples Shane Reti also attended the meeting. “Whether it’s in Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, New Zealand, Australia, we are now a superhighway for drugs, particularly out of South America,” he said. Leaders from Samoa and New Zealand during a Cabinet meeting addressing a joint response to drug crime in the Pacific. Organised crime in the Pacific was discussed in a Cabinet report prepared for Customs Minister Casey Costello. The experts who briefed the minister described a “Pacific tsunami” of crime into small Pacific populations that would create problems.

Source: New Zealand Herald March 16, 2026 11:28 UTC