My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Calcottin woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Straight Island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Good morning and welcome to the Daily os It's Tuesday, the first of August. I'm Sam Kazlowski.
I'm Nina Koppule standing in Fazzara.
There's been a spate of shooting since Sydney.
A man executed while sitting in his vehicle in the underground car park of an apartment complex in busy Vondai Junction.
Two men have been shot in a brazen daylight attack at a Marrickville.
Barberup been breaking news.
A man in his thirties has been shot outside a home in the Sydney suburb of Green. Sydney's gun crime epidemic has claimed two more lives, with a man gunned down.
At Canterbury early today, his body lying in the street with children walking by.
We believe the shootings are related to drug gangs in Sydney's criminal underworld. But why has this escalation happened now? And if the police know what's fueling this violence, why can't they stop those responsible? Daily Telegraph Crime editor Mark Murray is going to answer those questions and more in a very interesting deep dive. But first, Nina, it was a very sad day for AFL fans yesterday and.
A very sad day for you, Sam.
I know it hit you as a hard one.
Buddy Franklin has announced his retirement from the AFL, effective immediately. The Swan's forward debuted in two thousand and five and played three hundred and fifty four games for Hawthorne and Sydney. He kicked one thousand and sixty six goals. That's the fourth most of all time.
Tasmanian authorities have confirmed a body found in Bushland last week as missing teen SHANEA Lee Tatnell. DNA testing formally identified the fourteen year old who went missing from Lonceston in April. A thirty six year old man has been charged with murder in relation to her discs appearance.
The Australian Space Agency has shared its findings surrounding the origins of an object that washed up on a Wa beach. The agency says they believe the two hundred and fifty kilogram object is most likely debrithe from a polar satellite launch vehicle operated by the Indian Space Research Organization.
And today's good news if you think you slept in on the weekend are preserved. Forty six thousand year old roundworm has been revived after it was found in Siberian permafrost. Scientists hope the findings will help them better understand evolutionary processes.
That is actually wild.
It's a long time to be asleep. There's been a lot of stories in the news in the last few weeks about shootings in Sydney and their connections to drug gangs and underworld crime, and I had a lot of questions. I wanted to know what was going on and what really needs to happen to bring this violence to an end. So I thought who better to ask than crime editor at the Daily Telegraph, Mark Murray. You might know him from his explainers on TikTok, but he's been following this
story since the seventies. Mark, thanks so much for joining us on the zeliazz this morning, talk to you. So just over the last month, we've seen multiple shootings in Sydney. At one point there was a number of shootings across a five day period. For those of us who literally have no idea where this story starts, what's happening here.
Well it said in five days we had three young people shot at green Acre in the middle of the night. Now one of those has since died, but two of those were believed to be totally innocent, where the target was a twenty four year old man and one of the bullet straight and hit a young couple. Then there was another shooting at Canterbury where a young drug dealer was filled. In between we had a defense lawyer, Mamouda
Bass who was very high profile. He was shot outside he's homing no Bankstown and lived so and then there was another shooting as well. So I've had five people injured in five days and you know, one of them the bodies was laying in the middle of the street in Canterbury where young school children were walking past before it was covered. And that's really raised a lot of people's news about what's going on in our streets.
But where has this all come from, like, is this just an annual occurrence or is there something particularly at play here that's led to this spike?
Now you do find little clusters. I'll be honest. I've been around a long time, you know, and I've been watching these shootings and I've seen it a lot worse, which is a pretty sad thing to say. But what
we've found it's all being driven by drug money. Invariably, it's by the fact that somebody either has bought, you know, a whole lot of cocaine and not paid the dealer, or somebody strayed into someone's territory and that's created a problem because the amount of money being made from cocaine is enormous, and especially in Sydney, we pay the highest prices in the world. That makes it the most profitable.
And so are you comfortable linking all of these murders to kind of that wider drug trade?
Invariably, although in the last two years there's been over twenty people murdered, some of those innocent victims, now, not all of them are strictly related to the drug trade. They may be amongst criminals who are involved in the drug trade who have got a personal vendetta or hate each other, or they just become enemies, you know, but it starts invariably with a drug war.
How do you know all of this? And that's a bit of an odd question, But where are you basing this information off?
I'll be really honest. For many, many years, I've been in Sydney, based in Sydney, I had a short stint overseas, so I've got to know a lot of police officers over the years. But i also have a number of underworld contacts that I've got to know over the years. And myself and another reporter, josh Hanrahan, you know, we spent a lot of time going out and about and
you get information and we've verify it. Like I'll get an information from a guy who's a crook or then a crook, and then I'll go and make sure that I get it verified, maybe by a police officer. We don't report rumor. We have to double check everything, right, Sometimes something's a bit murky because, as you can understand, in this world, not everybody's honest. Yeah, and also the
police sometimes very very protective of their information. They don't like things getting out there because it tips off people they might be arresting or plans they have. So it's a fine line walking between both the crooks and the cops. And that's what you have to do to try and do what we do where I'm well.
I'm interested then with your sense of how the underworld in Sydney is feeling at the moment. Is there a sense of fear within your key contacts now because of this spate of shootings, Yeah.
There is. You really, You've hit it right on the head. At the moment, there'd be eighty to one hundred well known Sydney crooks who are living overseas and either eleven nine or Turkey. Most of them are dual nationals who have got out of Sydney in the last year or two. Because when you have these shootings going on, the police do go out there and start smashing anybody in everyone they can. They've got to be seen to be doing things making life hell, even if they can't get them
on serious charges. But because of the way that people are being shot outside gyms and a frequency, a lot have got out of Sydney because they're worried they're going to be shot.
So if we kind of know that a lot of these shootings have drugs and this gang revenge rivalry behind them. Why do you think it's so hard for police to stop them and not put those serious charges on them, as you're saying, and have to kind of skirt around the edges.
Because the criminals have got very, very good at getting rid of evidence. There'll be three or four cars stolen. Sometimes some of those cars are stolen for a year ago and are put in storage. They then get on fire to get rid of DNA. Good prince, there's another car waiting. A lot of the times, the people stealing the car seldom to people who then pass them on
to other people who have no idea. So the big players are very care There was actually one that was in a court case and I was amazed when I saw it a police it intercepted a bone and in it they saw in the WhatsApp group there was a chat saying who will go and hit so and so for one hundred thousand? So there was a WhatsApp group advertising for a hit.
Is that kind of how much it costs to kill someone these days? Is about one hundred thousand?
It depends a lot. That was an old one for a start, you got to think I know this sounds a good crass, but there's a lot of overheads, so one hundred thousand is fairly cheap. It does depend on who the target is. There was Memordian, there was shot Bondi Junction. He was a high ranking common hero who was taking precautions. Now I've heard conservatively that would have cost anywhere from six hundred thousand to a million. Well that's because he's such a big player. Lots there were
two good shooters, two or three style and guns. Then there are day houses for those guys to go to. The guns cost money. But there are other people out there. There are the very young young criminals in young gangs, particularly young Islanders as Syrians, who are preyed upon by the organized crime groups, who are willing to try and shoot people for not a lot of money. And again they were really being paid by a whole range of exmedia.
So that that protects people. So said, there've been a lot of people arrested for lying us for these murders, but the police haven't put up the chain a lot because all those buddy is the way they've got so clever at doing that.
So it's clear that organized criminals in Sydney, but I'd say probably more broadly speaking, across Australia have leveled up. What do you think of the police response? So news others. Police have launched this task force, task Force Magnus. Do you think that'll be effective in stopping the next five shootings?
I think that task Force Magnet has been announced publicly, who vacate the public? Will they stop the next five shootings? They will, They'll stop some shootings, but not all of them, and then they have to get practical. I can't keep all these crops on the street twenty four to seven without having blowing the state budget, and then the shootings
will start again. As I said, I've been seeing it going on and off for forty years, and there might be a lull for six months, twelve months, then there will be another another crew that will come along and then they'll start. They'll start a war.
So what is the solution then? How do you cut their head off the snake?
You have to stop drugs coming into the city or which I don't think will really work. We've got to stop people taking drugs. I've spoken to cops. I'm just going well, look, we know that all these cocaines driving all these gang wars. What happens if we legalize it and they go, well, you'll still have the cartels try to come in and undercut the legal market. That makes it a bit difficult. I really don't understand where how
we can stop. You know, it's I said, ideally beef there was no production out of South America and no tatanin. But that's just an unrealistic So I don't know. What we've got to stop is the new breed of shooter. Is what worries me is they are so reckless. You know, the guy's going into the barber shop in marrit Fort on a Friday afternoon an opening fire. There was another incident LUs year outside of gym and the bullet strayed
and went into a childcare center next door. In the eighties, I remember covering there was a Ganglan war where eight to ten people were shot went missing. Now I think one of those one was in the daytime. The rest we're done in the middle of the night, very quietly. Some just disappeared and their bones were found years and years later. That's how the murders were done. The hits were done then hardly ever, in public we've seen. You know, there was a guy called Wally arm Met who was
shot sitting having coffee at a rooftop of Bankstown. A guy went up and they opened fire there and an austraight bullok when we hit the lady at a coffee table next to him. In the old daiies, they didn't really do that many public shootings, and now they're just they're shooting broad daylight with Stemi automatic weapons. That's what's the scary thing.
Mark last question from me. You've been around the traps a lot, very clearly, you've got a lot of strong contacts in this kind of other side to Sydney than a lot of us. See, are you worried about your own personal safety when reporting this kind of thing?
Yeah, a little bit now Again never used to be because in the old days pure newspapers were a little bit more anonymous with social media very visible. Also, I mean I've had guys come rom you lock in a pub because they're very unhappy about what I've written. So it's a little bit scared. And again they don't seem to have the rules that they used to have. You know, we've seen women shot dead. A woman called the metafol power. She was shot dead. In the old days, again, women
weren't shot. They'd never put people's lives in danger in the public becauzen're as bad for business. You're in A journalist used to be bad for business, and I have to do it. But yeah, it is a bit of a worry, But I'm thinking that they've got more important things to do than go and get me. So I'm just reporting what the underworld and the police know already. We're just leading the public mailk around it.
Well, Michael, really appreciate your time kind of illuminating this side of the city that we don't talk about that much, and we really appreciate it.
Not a problem. Thank you for having me on.
Thanks for joining us on the Daily Ours today. If you liked this episode and you're listening on Spotify as always, we'd love to hear your questions, your comments, you can pop them in the box under the episode description. Sam and Zara will be back again tomorrow. Until then, have an excellent day.