MELBOURNE, July 29 (Xinhua) -- The Australian federal and Western Australian governments increased their commitment to stamping out organized crime on Friday.
Western Australia's Deputy Premier and Minister for Police Liza Harvey was joined by Australia's Minister for Justice Michael Keenan in announcing a 4.6 million-U.S.-dollar funding boost for the WA National Anti-Gang Squad (NAGS).
Keenan said that stopping the threat posed by organized crime is a priority of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's government.
"We know that organized crime in Australia relies heavily on the illegal drug market as its principle source of profit with more than 60 percent of Australia's highest risk criminal targets involved in the ice market and driving its expansion," Keenan said at a press conference in WA on Friday.
"That is why we are fostering unprecedented cooperation between our federal and state law enforcement agencies to tackle this threat."
"We're not backing off. We're going hard to shut down their evil trades, using this additional investment, particularly in regional areas, to help disrupt attempts by organized criminal syndicates to peddle misery and exert significant influence over Australia's black market."
Harvey said that the growing use of methamphetamines in Australia is a problem the WA government is committed to tackling.
"The NAGS commitment is part of the Liberal National Government's WA Meth Strategy which tackles meth on three fronts -- education to stop people from ever using this dangerous drug; support and treatment services to help people who are impacted by meth; and disrupting supply," she said.
The NAGS initiative, which includes representatives from national agencies as well as state police, has resulted in more than 53 kilograms of methamphetamines, worth 40 million U.S. dollars, being seized in WA alone since 2014.