By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim
The New South Wales Labor government has continued its ongoing legislative crackdown targeting organised and gang-related crime, with further measures aimed at emerging criminal trends being facilitated by newly developing technologies, along with a swag of reforms that enhance preexisting regimes tackling organised crime that were progressed by the Perrottet government in 2022.
Introduced on 12 May 2026, the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Organised and Gang-related Crime Reforms) Bill 2026 has been spruiked as a means of enhancing the ability of police to dismantle organised crime, stamp out the use of so-called “kill cars”, or vehicles used in multiple crimes, which are stolen and have fake numberplates, and would, if passed, increase gaol terms that apply to coordinated lawbreaking.
“We are coming after their cars, their guns, their money, their networks, and especially the cowards who are recruiting children to be part of their criminal activity,” NSW police minister Yasmin Catley told parliament during the question time prior to tabling the legislation. “We do not want this violence on our streets. We do not want children being dragged into criminal gangs.”
The 12 June 2026 NSW government press release announcing the omnibus bill outlines that it also included measures to deter organised crime recruiting children, the firebombing of tobacconists, public shootings, the expansion of offences that provide for a stay or a pause on making a decision on bail and an extension of the period in which proceeds of crime assets can be seized.
Catley also asserted that the laws being introduced were the types of powers that serve to allow law enforcement to sweep up organised crime networks, and she further told parliament that the May 2025-established organised crime-focused Taskforce Falcon has conducted more than 450 arrests, laid over 1,200 charges, and its 150 dedicated officers have executed more than 100 search warrants.
Beefing up organised criminal offences
The Organised Crime Bill created and strengthened a number of criminal offences, as well as modernised sections of legislation so they are no longer so archaic.
The bill inserted the aggravated offence of possessing, firing or carrying a loaded firearm or spear gun in public into subsection 93G(1A) of Crimes Act 1900. Aggravated circumstances means the gun was a pistol or prohibited firearm. And the offence carries 14 years, while if aggravation can’t be proven, the defendant then faces the basic crime, or the “simpliciter offence”.
The legislation also reformed the offence under subsection 93GA(1) of the Crimes Act, which involves firing a gun at a dwelling-house or building, so that it now includes firing a gun at a motor vehicle as well, and the penalty applying to this crime has been upped from 14 to 16 years prison time.
The maximum penalty now applying to the aggravated subsection 93GA(1A) offence of committing this offence during a public disorder or the subsection 93GA(1B) offence of firing on a dwelling-house, building or motor vehicle in the course of carrying out organised crime activity now both carry 18 years, which is up from the former 16 years prison time.
The aggravated offence of destroying or damaging property or specifically destroying or damaging a motor vehicle that has been used in the commission of “an aggravated circumstances offence” has been inserted into new subsection 195(1AAA) of the Crimes Act. This crime carries a maximum penalty of 12 years gaol time.
As Catley explained this new law is designed to protect against the growing organised crime practice of using of “kill cars” or stolen motor vehicles to commit serious criminal offences and then destroying these vehicles to conceal the forensic evidence.
In terms of this new offence, the simpliciter offence is the subsection 195(1)(b) crime of destroying or damaging property via fire or explosives, which regularly carries 10 years prison time. And if the kill car offence is not made out the basic subsection 195(1)(b) offence can be applied instead.
The new crime of destroying or damaging a business premises with reckless disregard for the safety of persons has been inserted into section 196A of the Crimes Act. This involves an offender destroying a business premises by fire or explosives that belongs to another person or to themselves and another. This crime carries up to 14 years prison time.
The crime of recruiting persons for criminal activity, contrary to section 351A of the Crimes Act, has also undergone changes. Firstly, the penalty applying to the subsection 351A(2) crime of recruiting a child for criminal activity has been upped to 12 years from 10.
Then an aggravated form of the offence of recruiting a child for crime has been inserted into subsection 351A(2A), which carries 15 years prison, and further the newly legislated provision stipulates that for both the subsection 351(2) and 351(2A) crimes, knowledge of the recruited child’s age doesn’t need to be shown in terms of the understanding of a recruiting offender.
Circumstances of aggravation involved in the subsection 351(2A) offence can include the child recruited being under 16 years of age or that the crime the child has been recruited to partake is listed under this section as an “aggravated circumstances offence”, and such offences, include crimes of serious violence and offences that are part of organised crime activity.
Reforming bail related to organised crime
Catley’s legislation also makes amendments to the Bail Act 2013 (NSW), and specifically section 18.
This involved the inserting of subsection 18(1)(f) into the list of bail concerns, or things that must be considered when determining whether to grant bail to an accused, so it now includes any history of compliance or noncompliance with serious crime prevention or firearm prohibition orders, while subsection 18(2)(a1) now requires consideration of whether an offence was part of organised crime.
Section 40 of the Bail Act has long provided for stays on bail decisions. This means that a determination on conditional release can be put off for up to three days when the prosecution has submitted a “detention application”, which seeks to prevent bail being granted or lifted in relation to an accused charged over a serious criminal offence.
The legislation has now added subsection 40(5) to the Bail Act in order to clarify that serious criminal offences include murder, those punishable by life, crimes against the person involving sexual assault or sex with a child under 16, as well as serious domestic violence offences, sexual assaults, the discharging of firearms with intent and the firing upon dwellings or cars during public disorders.
Recovering the proceeds of crime
“The statutory review of the 2022 organised crime reforms recommended amendments to improve the operation of the Confiscation of Proceeds of Crime Act 1989 and the Criminal Assets Recovery Act 1990,” said the NSW police minister towards the end of her lengthy 12 May 2026 second reading speech.
“These regimes are important tools in the law enforcement arsenal and target the proceeds from illicit activity, attacking the profit motive that drives serious, organised crime and disrupting further criminal offending by reducing and undermining criminal assets.”
The courts can currently make a “drug trafficker declaration” against a convicted person, under section 34 of the Criminal Assets Recovery Act 1900 (NSW), when an offender has been involved in multiple serious drug crimes or has dealt in quantities of at least a commercial size of a prohibited substance or has been convicted over serious drug offences in relation to organised crime.
The designation of an offender as a drug trafficker means their assets can be confiscated following the 5-year-long declaration being applied. Yet, prior to Catley’s reforms, an application for forfeiture of a drug trafficker’s property could only be made within the initial 12 months of the declaration but an amendment to section 34A of the Act now means this can happen throughout the entire 5 years.
The final major amendments were made to the Crime Commission Act 2012 (NSW) so as to ensure that the minister can only appoint persons to the position of assistant NSW Crime Commission commissioner only if they are in possession of “special legal qualifications”, and further, the minister has been empowered to appoint temporary replacements when an assistant commissioner is ill.
The legislation, which passed the NSW upper house on 4 June 2026, further made some minor amendments to the 2022-established dedicated encrypted criminal communication devices (DECCDs) regime and to the 2023-established digital evidence access order (DEAO) regime.
