The crime fighter who wants to break cocaine’s spell over Sydney (2024)

The problem, Michael Barnes thinks, is not just drug traffickers. It’s the users. The head of NSW’s fearsome Crime Commission, Barnes has repeatedly made headlines lambasting the “beautiful people in Double Bay, Carlton and New Farm” for recreational cocaine use. As governments across the country throw resources at interrupting the supply of drugs, Barnes says it is the “inelastic” demand that must now be addressed.

Barnes explains his conviction that “undesirable behaviours” can become socially unacceptable at Medusa Greek Taverna on Market Street in the CBD, among the well-heeled crowd that flock there at lunchtime, some of whom may well be among the many Sydneysiders who think nothing of doing a line or three of white powder on a Saturday night if wastewater tests are to be believed.

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“When I was a kid, people used to boast about drink-driving like, ‘Oh, I was so drunk last night, drove home.’ People don’t do that any more,” he says. “There has been a change of attitude towards that antisocial behaviour.” He cites smoking and the AIDS crisis as other examples of successful public health campaigns that might provide the model to moderate the habits that help make Sydney one of the most lucrative drug markets in the world.

Medusa is a quick stroll to the Crime Commission’s Kent Street headquarters, and Barnes is a regular here, such that Peter, the restaurant’s avuncular proprietor, tells us he will sort out what we eat.

Peter is keen to give us a bottle of wine, but Barnes has demurred – not so long ago, images of an intoxicated Barnaby Joyce lying on a Canberra footpath hit the news, and Barnes is a public servant – so I join him in tap water.

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With that sorted, I’m keen to hear about Barnes’ career, which has taken an unlikely trajectory from failed tabloid reporter – he left journalism when he was sacked by infamous News Corp editor Col Allan – to the state’s top job in the fight against organised crime.

“It was the only job I’ve ever been fired from in my life,” he says, animated as he explains his undoing at Sydney’s now-defunct Daily Mirror.

“It was in the days you used to do something called ‘gramming’ photos through, and I took a photograph and grammed it through, and Col had a go at me, going ‘You think you’re a f---ing pic editor, do you?’”

“So I didn’t do that again. And the next week there was a really good picture that I didn’t send through.

“When we used to have bank robbers, these robbers went in and fired a shot at the teller. She ducked and the bullet put a furrow through her hair, you could see where the furrow was,” he says, clearly enjoying telling the story.

“And I didn’t send that through. Because I’m not the f---ing pic editor. So he rang me, going off because I didn’t file it and told me not to bother coming in on Monday.”

Barnes rejects my suggestion that he’s had the last laugh, countering that Allan has done “pretty well for himself” as Peter procures a platter laden with halloumi, spanakopita, dips, zucchini flowers, flatbread and olives.

“I was doing law by then, so I wasn’t [keen on] being spoken to by people in the office like that,” he says of his sliding doors moment away from the family trade – his father was a journalist – and into the world of law.

After completing his degree in Brisbane, Barnes worked for the Aboriginal Legal Service and represented families in the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

“That sort of drove me and gave me insight into how badly coronial inquests had been done at that stage all over the country,” he explains.

Barnes went on to work as the state coroner in both Queensland and NSW, presiding over investigations into the disappearance of Daniel Morcombe, the death of cricketer Phillip Hughes and the Lindt cafe siege.

The role of a coroner can be a highly charged one. Barnes attracted high praise from Bruce and Denise Morcombe, who credited him with the “breakthrough” that allowed police to catch their son Daniel’s killer. It hasn’t all been positive – he stood down from running the inquest into the death of an Aboriginal man inside a Palm Island watchhouse because he had investigated the police officer involved in a previous role and “shared beers” with some of the lawyers involved on the inquest’s first day. On another occasion, Phillip Hughes’ parents – who went on to accept Barnes’ findings – made headlines for walking out of the inquest as Cricket Australia’s barrister made submissions.

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Now at the apex of his career, Barnes sits in the box seat of the fight against organised crime, leading a body with powers to drain bank accounts, bug phones and cars and force people to testify (lying is not an option; in fact, it’s a criminal offence). Just this week, the Crime Commission confiscated $10 million worth of assets from a businessman police say was involved in the supply of drugs.

It strikes me that a job atop the commission is at odds with a long career in civil liberties.

“Twenty years ago, I’d probably have agreed with you,” Barnes says as our mains arrive. Peter delivers a Greek salad and the special of the day – goat served over a bed of grains that surprises me with how much it tastes like lamb.

“I don’t now. I take a broader view on what civil liberties are. And I think your right not to be shot in the street by drug traffickers trumps the right of the suspect to refuse to answer questions.” This last comment is made firmly.

It’s hard to argue with his next statement. “Public place shootings are a danger to us all.”

Well-established as connected to Australia’s thriving organised crime market, shootings that occasionally harm the public instead of their intended targets are entirely driven by the eye-watering profits to be made selling drugs in Sydney.

Globally, profit margins are only higher in Saudi Arabia, where anyone convicted of being involved is put to death by decapitation. And international players doing business in Australia can minimise their personal risk: globalisation means huge volumes of Chinese-made methamphetamine can be trafficked into Port Botany while the kingpins remain offshore; powerful Latin American drug cartels can import huge volumes of cocaine using local figures to do the dirty work.

The money – the latest wastewater analysis from the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission suggests Australians spent $12.4 billion on drugs last year – is so alluring that traditional rivals in Sydney’s underworld sometimes work together in the pursuit of profit.

A waitress arrives to take away our mains, and Peter reappears to assure us that dessert is on its way.

‘The ones we don’t know about’

Given his professional interest in undermining the heavyweights of the Sydney underworld, who are well-known to be people not averse to a bit of maiming and torturing, I ask Barnes if he’s ever worried about his personal safety. “Nah,” he says, giving a definitive shake of his head.

What does worry him, then? “The ones we don’t know about. The stupid ones keep getting caught, whereas the good ones perhaps don’t. It’s a concern. The good operators, we don’t know about them. The fear that there are good operators we don’t know about doing the business and sliding through.”

He namechecks Tsi Chi Lop, a Canadian businessman who was picked up at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in 2021, as an example of a smart operator who knew how to fly under the radar. Dubbed the “El Chapo of Asia”, Chi Lop is the alleged head of the global drug syndicate the Company and now awaits trial in Victoria on charges of commercial drug trafficking.

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“He insisted that none of his network engage in violence,” Barnes says. “That’s what brings police attention. He was very successful.”

Dessert – a coconut cake and tiny pieces of Turkish delight covered in icing sugar and an espresso for Barnes – arrives as the restaurant empties around us, and talk turns to how he decompresses from long days of death and destruction.

A keen member of his local surf lifesaving club, Barnes swims three times a week and is in training for a swim trek in the Mediterranean Sea off Turkey later this year that will see him cover up to seven kilometres of water a day.

He gives another emphatic shake when I suggest that’s a helluva lot of swimming. “It’s like going for a walk in the water. You can get out whenever you want.”

Doing things on his own terms seems important to Barnes – he’s partway through a five-year term as the Crime Commissioner, with the potential to renew for another five years in 2025. “I like the idea that you have to reassess periodically. I don’t know if I’ll go again.”

When I go to pay, there is a bit of a snafu – Peter tells me twice that the meal is on him. Confusion ensues as I explain I need to pay and need an itemised receipt for the newspaper, but eventually, the point is made, and I tap my corporate card. As we leave Medusa, the scream of sirens fills the air. There’s been another public place shooting.