‘Sensationalism’ vs ‘negationism’

In attempting to reconstruct a history of the ‘Australian ’Ndrangheta’, we face the same epistemological dilemma identified by Sicilian historian Salvatore Lupo in the US, where public discussion of the mafia has been played out between opposing extremes of ‘sensationalism’ and ‘negationism’. Journalists, Hollywood, aspiring politicians, police and criminal prosecutors have sometimes sensationalised the mafia threat for instrumental ends, inflating it into a ‘vast conspiracy’ associated with the paranoid ‘nativist’ notion of an alien menace which threatens to contaminate the purity of native values (Lupo Reference Lupo2008, 160f).

It would certainly be a mistake to assume that ’ndranghetisti in Australia have ever achieved the level of social, political and economic penetration witnessed in contemporary Italy or in the US and Canada during the Prohibition and early post-war periods. In 1970s Sydney ‘by far the most powerful syndicate figures in Sydney [were] very much … of English, Irish or Scottish origin, with names like Smith, Freeman, McPherson or Anderson’ (Jenkins Reference Jenkins1989, 108). Alfred McCoy (Reference McCoy1980, 298–308) found the focus of the 1979 Woodward Royal Commission into Drug Trafficking on a small group of Calabrian cannabis growers in the New South Wales (NSW) town of Griffith ludicrous, at the time of a national heroin epidemic promoted largely by non-Italian criminals.

Yet in a critique of the ‘negationist’ thesis, John Dickie (Reference Dickie2011, Reference Dickie2013) has demonstrated how denying or downplaying the very existence of the three Southern Italian mafias has often provided highly effective cover for their ongoing criminal activities. In one of many striking US parallels, Lupo (Reference Lupo2008, 191–198) has also identified a ‘liberal progressivist’ variation on the negationist theme, in which, especially from the 1960s, Italian-American scholars and community leaders sought to deny or downplay the significance of Italian-American organised crime, and to highlight the dangers of singling out one ethnic group and unfairly criminalising an entire community. Using the analogy of the African-American civil rights movement and the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, Italian-American lobbyists were even successful in persuading New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller to issue a ban on the use of the words ‘Mafia’ and ‘Cosa Nostra’ in the 1970s. In Australia, the National Italian Australian Foundation has more recently used similar ‘anti-racist’ rhetoric to contest the allegedly ‘offensive’ use of the word ‘Mafia’ in Australian media reporting.Footnote ³

As in Mark Aaron’s account (2001) of post-war immigration to Australia by alleged war criminals from Eastern Europe, the notion of an ‘Australian ’Ndrangheta’ threatens at times to destabilise the conventionally heroic narratives of Australia’s multicultural history which have been propounded (with the noblest of intentions) by Australian migration scholars. The same liberal progressive ‘negationism’ identified by Lupo has had a similar effect on Australian scholarship, evident in the virtual absence of a local scholarly literature on the topic. In their efforts to defend the honour of the Italo-Australian community, Australian studies of the inter-war Black Hand crime wave in North Queensland (Henderson Reference Henderson1995; Richards Reference Richards2011; Douglas Reference Douglas1995) discount evidence for the existence of an organised Southern Italian criminal secret society, and often seem to interpret the ‘Black Hand scare’ as a paranoid reflection of Anglo-Australian racism towards Italian migrants. Gerardo Papalia’s account (2008) of celebrations in Melbourne and Calabria of the Festa della Montagna di Polsi is notable for the absence of any allusion to the festival’s central role within ’Ndrangheta cosmology (Gratteri and Nicaso Reference Gratteri and Nicaso2013a, 11–18). In a recent Australian Institute of Criminology research paper, Shona Morrison (Reference Morrison2002, 2) even makes the (counterfactual) claim that it is a ‘myth’ that ‘ethnicity is a valid dimension for describing organised crime’, despite the fact that Calabrian birth or at least ancestry has long been an established criterion for ’Ndrangheta membership in Calabria, the US and Australia (Paoli Reference Paoli2003, 11, 90f; Woodward Reference Woodward1979).

Lupo (Reference Lupo2002, 19) highlights a major cross-cultural contrast between the politics of mafia representation in Italy and the US which is equally relevant to the Australian situation:

As in the US, mafia ‘negationism’ in Australia since the 1970s has been strongly associated with progressive cultural politics, no more so than under the reformist Whitlam Australian Labor Party (ALP) Government, which in 1972 abolished the notorious ‘White Australia’ policy and established ‘multiculturalism’ as official Government policy. The most influential exponent of mafia negationism in Australia has certainly been the late Al Grassby, Whitlam’s highly engaging Minister for Immigration, often described as ‘the father of Australian multiculturalism’, and lionised by the Italian (Huber Reference Huber1977) and many other ethnic communities in Australia for his undoubted achievements in transforming Australia into a more tolerant and inclusive society.

Yet there is also substantial evidence that Grassby provided political cover for the influential and well organised ’Ndrangheta cell identified in the 1979 Woodward Royal Commission in his electorate in the NSW town of Griffith (Small and Gilling Reference Small and Gilling2010, 8–14; Moor Reference Moor2009, 286–300). Here there is another compelling parallel with the US, where a similar convergence between the two separate ‘liberal’ and ‘criminal’ currents within ‘negationist’ discourse occurred through the establishment of the Italian-American Civil Rights League by New York mafia boss, Joe Colombo:

If the notion of an ’Ndrangheta presence remains a sensitive subject in Australian scholarly circles, the parallel debate among US migrationists appears to have moved on since the 1970s, as witnessed by the 2014 ‘Mafias: Representations and Realities’ Conference held at New York’s Calandra Italian-American Institute:

The ‘Australian ’Ndrangheta’: the publicly available historical evidence

What then is the evidence for the presence in Australia of the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta, a local offshoot of what is now the most powerful and most ‘globalised’ of the three southern Italian mafias (Direzione Nazionale Antimafia Reference Direzione Nazionale2013; Dickie Reference Dickie2013, 448–465) and the only one of these three criminal organisations known to have been significantly active in Australia? This study draws solely on published works and archival and news sources currently available online, while offline resources held in each Australian capital city have yet to be fully utilised.Footnote ⁴

It has been argued that the Sicilian-dominated history of the US mob reflects patterns of migration from traditional Mafia zones in Western Sicily (Lupo Reference Lupo2008). By contrast, Sicilian immigration to Australia has been largely from the less-Mafia influenced areas of Eastern Sicily, while high levels of immigration from ’Ndrangheta-dominated areas in the province of Reggio Calabria, it has been argued, have instead favoured a virtual Calabrian monopoly on Italian organised crime in Australia (Ciconte and Macrì Reference Ciconte and Macrì2009, 3, 24; Sergi Reference Sergi2014). Forgione’s allusion (2010, 305–308) to activity by the Secondigliano Camorra clan in Sydney and Melbourne would seem a marginal and very recent development, while Chandler’s claim (1976, 198) that a Sicilian Mafia branch was established in Perth in the 1920s seems dubious. For very rare evidence of Sicilian involvement in inter-war Black Hand gangs led by Calabrians in North Queensland, see Harvey (Reference Harvey1948). In a development unrelated to the ’Ndrangheta, leading non-Italian criminals in Sydney from the 1970s did facilitate investment in the local gaming industry by Sicilian-American members of the Chicago mob (Bottom Reference Bottom1979; McCoy Reference McCoy1980, Reference McCoy1986).

Federico Varese (Reference Varese2013) has argued that migration from traditional mafia areas is a key factor in successful ‘mafia transplantation’, yet migration from such areas is not a sufficient cause in itself, and successful ‘transplantation’ is instead influenced by a complex range of factors (Sciarrone Reference Sciarrone2014; Sciarrone and Storti Reference Sciarrone and Storti2014). A key question is whether Australian ’ndranghetisti are criminals who emigrate, or migrants who become criminals in their new homeland. The available evidence tends to support the first hypothesis; the family origins of many persons associated with ’Ndrangheta activity in Australia can be traced to specific areas in the province of Reggio Calabria which have been historically dominated by the ’Ndrangheta, while there is also strong evidence for genealogical links between Australian ’ndranghetisti with surnames such as Sergi, Romeo, Condello, Barbaro, Trimboli or Alvaro and homonymous clans still active to this day in this province.

A 1904 Australian press report describes alleged members of ‘the Mafia Secret Society’ being prevented from boarding a ship in Naples bound for Australia (Launceston Examiner, 9 February 1904), while early references to the ‘Camorra’ or ‘Black Hand’ clearly reflect the influence of news reports of US and Canadian ‘Black Hand’ activities. A later Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) report (Reference BrownBrown, Reference Brown1965) records a kind of foundation myth of the Australian ’Ndrangheta, in which three ’ndranghetisti arrive in Australia aboard the steamship Re d’Italia in December 1922. Domenico Strano goes on to found the Sydney branch, Antonio Barbara founds the Melbourne branch, while an unnamed third man goes on to found the Perth branch (Moor Reference Moor2013; Ralph Reference Ralph2012).

Despite the quasi-mythological flavour of this narrative, which recalls the fictitious mafia narrative of the three cavalieri spagnoli said to have founded the Camorra, Mafia and ’Ndrangheta (Dickie Reference Dickie2011), shipping records from National Archives Australia (NAA)Footnote ⁵ confirm that Strano and Barbara did indeed travel to Australia aboard the Re d’Italia in 1922, along with Angelo Macrì (Delianuova), the probable third man. At least two other ’ndranghetisti were also on board: Domenico Belle (Palmi), later a leading light in the Sydney cell, and Giuseppe Bueti (Scilla), later deported for his involvement in Black Hand activities in North Queensland (Harvey Reference Harvey1948), and a probable member of the leading ’Ndrangheta family of the time in Scilla and Solano. Antonio Barbara (‘the Toad’) subsequently acquired a significant criminal CV, and was later named as future Melbourne boss Domenico Italiano’s main enforcer and debt collector (Rosengreen Reference Rosengreen1958). In early post-war Melbourne, we find him bribing two Department of Immigration officials to assist in an immigration scam bringing Calabrian associates into Australia, several with Italian criminal records (Cusack Reference Cusack1964).

From 1930 on, Australian public opinion was electrified by accounts of a ‘Black Hand Society’ active in North Queensland in extortions, murders and bombings, targeting members of the local Italian community along lines already familiar from pre-war US and Canada (Harvey Reference Harvey1948; Reference BrownBrown unpublished MS; Cordasco and Pitkin Reference Pitkin and Cordasco1977; Schneider Reference Schneider2009; Lupo Reference Lupo2008). Yet in a familiar negationist move, Australian historians have tended to dismiss the notion of an organised Italian criminal secret society operating in inter-war North Queensland as the product of xenophobic conspiracy theory or journalistic sensationalism (Henderson Reference Henderson1995; Richards Reference Richards2011) or downplayed evidence of organised criminal activity as merely a manifestation of the classic Southern Italian ‘vendetta’ (Douglas Reference Douglas1995). Yet the main historical source, Melbourne crime reporter John Harvey’s Reference Harvey1948Black Hand Vengeance, describes a well-integrated criminal network of Calabrians linking Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and North Queensland, with Black Handers travelling north for the cane season each year to run extortion and prostitution rackets. Harvey also presents familiar details of ’Ndrangheta ritual texts said to have been found in the possession of Calabrian Black Handers Francesco Femia and Vincenzo D’Agostino in North Queensland which would seem to support the existence of a criminal secret society organised along traditional lines (1948, 45f; cf Gratteri and Nicaso Reference Gratteri and Nicaso2013; Ciconte and Macrì Reference Ciconte and Macrì2009). Fabio Truzzolillo, in a personal communication, has also established clear ’Ndrangheta connections for two Black Handers deported from North Queensland in the early 1930s: Giuseppe Bueti (see above) and Giuseppe Parisi (Sinopoli), appointed boss of the Sinopoli locale on his return to Calabria and later imprisoned for ’Ndrangheta activities. Two major Australian police reports (Rosengreen Reference Rosengreen1958; Cusack Reference Cusack1964) also assume an organisational unity between the 1930s Black Hand gangs and the post-war ‘Honoured Society’.

Harvey’s account also seems to be supported by evidence of an ’Ndrangheta branch operating in Sydney in the same period. Following the mysterious 1930 stabbing to death of Domenico Belle in Sydney, CIB Detective Sergeant Matthews (Reference Matthews1931) reported discovering in the deceased’s house the familiar ritual texts and extensive correspondence with members of a ‘Camorra’ or ‘Evil Life’ (Malavita) society in Melbourne, Brisbane, Griffith and other parts of NSW. Antonio Brando (Palmi) was identified from correspondence with Belle as leader of the Melbourne cell at the time. Matthews concluded that the Society’s three principals in Sydney were Domenico Belle, Filippo Pignataro (Oppido Mamertina) and the main murder suspect, Giuseppe Mammone (Piminoro), and that they were involved in prostitution, extortion, and insurance scams, while Mammone had previously been deported from the US following a 1918 manslaughter charge in Buffalo, New York.

As in many later apparent ’Ndrangheta crimes, police were never able to bring Mammone to trial, yet the hard evidence for the existence of a foreign criminal secret society operating in Australia generated considerable alarm in Government circles at the time. In subsequent correspondence, the Federal Government requested urgent advice from Scotland Yard in London, estimating Society membership in NSW at 50 and about half a dozen in Melbourne.Footnote ⁶ By contrast, Sydney’s pro-Fascist Il Giornale Italiano ran a series of articles (some published in English for greater impact), denouncing claims of a ‘Camorra’ cell in Sydney as the figment of Australian journalistic imagination, and running the official Fascist party line that Mussolini had already virtually exterminated Italian organised crime by 1927 (Dickie Reference Dickie2011, 295f).

The mass internment of Italian men as ‘enemy aliens’ during the Second World War seems to have brought about the extinction of the ‘Black Hand’ phenomenon in North Queensland, although not in other parts of Australia. Whereas classical ‘Black Hand’ activities seem to cease in the US and Canada at the beginning of the 1920s Prohibition era, we find a 1957 case of ‘Black Hand’ extortion in Melbourne (Rosengreen Reference Rosengreen1958), while in the wake of a series of 1958 shootings and violence in Adelaide’s Italian community, South Australian (SA) police received an anonymous letter from a ‘Black Hand Society’ stating:

A CIB officer also alleged in court that the ‘Black Hand’ had intimidated witnesses in the fatal 1956 stabbing in Perth of Arcangelo Macrì by Salvatore Stillitano (Argus, 1 February 1956). As in the Southern Italian homeland in the same period (Dickie Reference Dickie2013) the Honoured Society began to be revitalised in the post-war era, particularly through mass immigration from ’Ndrangheta-dominated areas of the province of Reggio Calabria, such as Oppido Mamertina, Platì and Gioia Tauro (Sergi Reference Sergi2014).

In 1958 we find the first detailed account of the inner workings of an actual Australian ’Ndrangheta locale. A CIB report (Rosengreen Reference Rosengreen1958) on a police raid on a meeting of Calabrian men in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick cites information from an unnamed police informant and group member revealing an organisation closely structured along traditional lines: as dictated by the ’Ndrangheta regola sociale, all participants are armed with knives or pistols, which are collected on arrival and then returned at the end of the meeting; the members of the società minore meet in a separate room from the more senior members of the società maggiore, and the ranks of picciotto and camorrista are clearly discernible (cf Gratteri and Nicaso Reference Gratteri and Nicaso2010, 36).

The Brunswick meeting was convened by Domenico De Marte (Delianuova), named by Rosengreen’s informant as leader of the Melbourne cell, with a view to disciplining Society member Rocco Tripodi for a recent breach of protocol. Three separate Melbourne ‘branches’ of the organisation were identified in Brunswick, Moonee Ponds and Coburg, although as in many other Australian references in English to ’Ndrangheta ‘cells’ or ‘branches’, it is difficult to distinguish between the structurally important terms locale and ’Ndrina (Direzione Nazionale Antimafia Reference Direzione Nazionale2013, 751 n.331; Dickie Reference Dickie2013, 186f). Rosengreen’s informant estimated there were at least 150 Society members in Victoria, with active branches in Melbourne, Shepparton and Mildura, and also described attending a 1957 meeting of about 250 members, some perhaps from interstate, in Silvan, a fruit growing area on the outskirts of Melbourne.

Despite the remarkable overall success of ’Ndrangheta actors in cloaking their criminal activities in secrecy, there are other occasions when the tip of the ’Ndrangheta iceberg re-emerges into public view, often as a result of some particularly sensational act of violence, as in the 1963 murders linked to the ’Ndrangheta’s fruit and vegetable extortion racket at Melbourne’s Victoria Market. On his death in 1962, long-time Melbourne boss Domenico Italiano was succeeded by Domenico De Marte, with the support of Vincenzo Muratore (Messignadi) as contabile (treasurer), Francesco Madafferi (Oppido Mamertina?), Michele Scriva and Italiano deputy Antonio Barbara. All except Barbara were commissioning agents in the Victoria Market; a diagram of stall holders in the market’s O Shed published in a Melbourne newspaper revealed a virtual Who’s Who of the Melbourne cell, and included Domenico De Marte, Vincenzo and Francesco Madafferi, Serafino Tripodi, Francesco Cammaroto and future boss of the Melbourne cell Rosario Gangemi, all except Gangemi previously identified by Rosengreen (Reference Rosengreen1958) as Society members.Footnote ⁸ Following attempts to establish a breakaway ‘locale bastarda’ by Vincenzo Muratore, a power struggle broke out in which Vincenzo Angilletta (a former ‘estate watchman’ from Laureana di Borello, Gioia Tauro region) and Vincenzo Muratore were shot dead, and De Marte seriously wounded, forcing him to hand over leadership to Liborio Benvenuto, a native of Bruzzano Zeffirio (Cusack Reference Cusack1964).

Frustrated by a wall of omertà (silence) in Melbourne’s Italian community, police sought assistance from the FBI’s John Cusack and Ugo Macera of Italian Criminalpol. Macera carried out undercover investigations in the Victorian Italian community and later gave evidence as a prosecution witness in the 1965 trial in Palmi of alleged assassin Angelo De Marte (Canberra Times, 23 November 1966). Although the Macera report has never been released,Footnote ⁹ the Cusack report reproduces a fragment of the familiar ’Ndrangheta rules of association, as well as describing a large-scale extortion racket centred on the Victoria Market targeting Calabrian primary producers throughout Victoria, some of whom had reportedly been reduced to years of ‘virtual slavery’. In a particularly poignant anonymous letter found at the home of murdered ’Ndrangheta extortionist Vincenzo Muratore, one victim wrote:

Cusack estimated Society strength in 1964 at 300 in Victoria, including Mildura and Shepparton, with 200 in Melbourne. The organisation also existed in NSW and SA and ‘apparently to a lesser extent in Queensland and Western Australia (WA)’. In 1964, NSW Special Branch had observed a Society meeting in Sydney attended by about 55 members, with branch numbers estimated at approximately 500. Victorian, SA and NSW police had also uncovered travel arrangements for interstate meetings between Society leaders. Intelligence from the Victoria Market investigations also led to 1965 police raids targeting alleged ’ndranghetisti in Griffith and Sydney which were severely censured by the Italian-language press in both Australia and Italy.

In an observation which recalls the careers of more than one later ‘Australian ’Ndrangheta’ figure discussed below, Cusack stated that

In 1965, the Commonwealth Attorney General commissioned ‘The Italian Criminal Society in Australia’, a secret 146-page report by the ASIO’s Colin Reference BrownBrown on ’Ndrangheta activities nationally. Reference BrownBrown was based in Melbourne, but visited all states, and was assisted by an extensive range of Italian and Australian Government and police agencies (Moor Reference Moor2013). Although his report has never been officially released, summarised details suggest it provides a highly comprehensive account of the Society’s history in Australia, and names many of its key personnel (Minuti and Nicaso Reference Minuti and Nicaso1994, 105; Moor Reference Moor2013; Ralph Reference Ralph2012; Cash Reference Cash1992). Harvey (Reference Harvey1948, 6) had earlier described Black Hand gangs as being already well organised in the NSW Riverina area in the inter-war period, while Reference BrownBrown noted the 1932 murder of Griffith boss Rocco Tremarchi (Ralph Reference Ralph2012). Mildura boss Giuseppe Rullo (Oppido Mamertina) was awarded a Society ‘pension’ on his retirement in 1956, and honoured with the first in a long series of big mafia-style funerals on his death in 1964 (Ralph Reference Ralph2012). He was succeeded by Raffaele Romeo, thus inaugurating an enduring Riverina crime dynasty (Woodward Reference Woodward1979; McLaren Reference McLaren2011). The 1965 death of Sydney boss Domenico Strano saw a similar gangland-style funeral attended by ‘numerous criminal and public figures from NSW and interstate’ (Ralph Reference Ralph2012). Strano was succeeded by Raffaele Mafrici, then Domenico Alvaro, while Bruno Romeo (Platì) as head of the SA cell is reported to have made numerous trips to Sydney, Melbourne and Mildura in 1964 to keep in touch with Society leaders, including Domenico Alvaro (Cash Reference Cash1992).

Clear evidence for the existence of a national ‘camera di controllo’ organised on Italian lines emerged in a 1966 NSW Commissioner of Police report claiming that leaders from each state attended a national meeting held each year in Mildura to coordinate activities across Australia. One hundred and sixty Society members had been identified in NSW, with branch membership estimated at 300–400 for Sydney, 50 for Wollongong and 150–200 for Griffith (NSW Commissioner of Police 1966). A 1969 Central Crime Intelligence Bureau of the Commonwealth Police report listed 341 suspected ’Ndrangheta members in Australia (Small and Gilling Reference Small and Gilling2010, 20), while a 1981 Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence (ABCI) report described how Australia had been divided up into six regions, each with its own head: Giuseppe Carbone in SA, Domenico Alvaro in NSW, Pasquale Alvaro in the Federal capital, Canberra, close Al Grassby associate Peter CallipariFootnote ¹⁰ (Platì) in Griffith, Pasquale Barbaro in Melbourne, and Giuseppe Alvaro in Adelaide (Ciconte and Macrì Reference Ciconte and Macrì2009, 6). Western Australian and Queensland are notable absences from the ABCI list.

Australian ’ndranghetisti had so far focussed exclusively, as in the early days of the US and Canadian mobs, on extortion rackets targeting the local Italian community, but the organisation was about to make a momentous paradigm shift into drug trafficking which parallels similar transformations taking place at the same time in Calabria (Ciconte Reference Ciconte1996). From the early 1970s, ’ndranghetisti began moving into large-scale cannabis cultivation in many remote bush locations all over Australia, most notoriously in the NSW Griffith region. Funds from the ’Ndrangheta’s booming kidnapping business in the 1970s were now reinvested into its Australian cannabis operations (Ciconte and Macrì Reference Ciconte and Macrì2009, 52; Minuti and Nicaso Reference Minuti and Nicaso1994, 106). As in Calabrian towns like Bovalino in the wake of the Getty kidnapping, the sudden flood of criminal proceeds became obvious in conspicuous Griffith property investment (Moor Reference Moor2009). There is also evidence that some of these cannabis earnings were later reinvested in tourist infrastructure in Calabria’s marina towns, revealing an emergent pattern integrating Australia into an expanding global ’Ndrangheta financial network (Ciconte and Macrì Reference Ciconte and Macrì2009, 106; Small and Gilling Reference Small and Gilling2010, 19; Moor Reference Moor2013). But improved aerial surveillance techniques and increased police repression from the 1980s put increasing pressure on large-scale ’Ndrangheta outdoor cannabis cultivation, but not distribution (McLaren Reference McLaren2011).

Concerned by the burgeoning Griffith cannabis industry, local businessman and Liberal Party candidate Donald Mackay initiated a high profile anti-drug campaign. His 1977 disappearance and presumed death led to the 1979 Woodward Royal Commission into Drug Trafficking. Woodward found that a criminal secret society composed exclusively of persons of Calabrian origin existed in Australia, that the Griffith branch was made up almost entirely of persons born in Platì, and that Donald McKay had been disposed of by members of, or on behalf of that organisation.

Increasing public concern about organised crime led in 1984 to the establishment of the National Crime Authority (NCA), intended to overcome the jurisdictional barriers of the Australian federal system in investigating organised crime (but also to bypass the problem of widespread corruption in State police forces revealed in the Woodward and subsequent Royal Commissions). The NCA focussed on ’Ndrangheta operations throughout the 1980s and 1990s, sometimes in close collaboration with Italian anti-Mafia investigators such as Nicola Calipari (Ciconte and Macrì Reference Ciconte and Macrì2009), who spent three months with the NCA in 1988 and provided expert advice on the ’Ndrangheta, famously authenticating three ’Ndrangheta ritual texts found in the 1980s. Such texts have been reported in Far North Queensland (1930s), Sydney (1930), Melbourne (1957 and 1963), Adelaide (1987 and 1989) and Canberra (1982) and suggest that the organisation has been able to export its traditional quasi-Masonic corporate structure and culturally reproduce itself along traditional lines far from its homeland. Giovanni Falcone’s 1990 visit to Australia as a guest of the NCA, during which he provided a list of ’ndranghetisti operating in WA, seems to confirm the view that Falcone considered Australia significant enough in the wider anti-mafia struggle to warrant the lengthy trip to the Antipodes (Canberra Times, 23 June 1991; Campbell et al. Reference Campbell, Toohey and Pinwill1992, 162).

In 1989, Deputy Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) Colin Winchester was shot dead outside his home in Canberra, in an execution-style killing which a police forensic expert described as the work of ‘either a professional, or a very, very lucky amateur’ (Campbell et al. Reference Campbell, Toohey and Pinwill1992). Winchester had previously authorised a secret ‘police crop’: a cannabis plantation set up in an AFP double-cross operation in rural NSW to trace the supply network back to ’Ndrangheta ringleaders. Although it has become an article of faith for Italian anti-mafia investigators ever since that the Winchester killing was carried out by the ’Ndrangheta, this thesis has never been proved at law. Early AFP pursuit of ’Ndrangheta leads led to the discovery of yet another ritual text and the bugging of a 1989 ‘mafia summit’ in Adelaide, where, according to Bob Bottom, senior Society members from all over Australia, and possibly overseas, discussed ‘plans to corrupt judges, politicians and police, and to gain access to police intelligence files … social security and insurance frauds, tax and Customs duty evasion, hard drugs, extortion, prostitution, illegal gambling and small arms smuggling’ (Bottom Reference Bottom1991, quoted in Canberra Times, 6 June 1991, and Campbell et al., Reference Campbell, Toohey and Pinwill1992, 150). The meeting seems to provide further evidence for the existence of a superordinate national ‘camera di controllo’. Yet the AFP ’Ndrangheta investigation proved inconclusive and at times inept (Campbell et al. Reference Campbell, Toohey and Pinwill1992, 144–164; Eastman Inquiry 2013), and instead led to the conviction in 1995 of a mentally unstable (and non-Italian) Canberra public servant, David Eastman. Despite strenuous attempts by the AFP and the ACT Department of Public Prosecutions to prevent the case being re-opened, an inquiry into Eastman’s conviction found in 2014 that it was legally flawed, and he has since been released on bail and his conviction quashed.

In 1994, a letter bomb in the NCA’s Adelaide headquarters killed AFP officer Geoffrey Bowen and injured a police prosecutor; both were due to give evidence in the trial of ’Ndrangheta suspect Domenic Perre on cannabis charges the following day (Madigan Reference Madigan2013). Although the SA Coroner later found that Perre was responsible for the attack, he was never tried.Footnote ¹¹ At the same time, a remarkable 18-month police undercover operation was penetrating the Griffith cell (McLaren Reference McLaren2011; Marrett Reference Marrett2005).

Melbourne’s so called ‘gangland wars’ of the 1980s and 1990s have generated enormous interest in Australian organised crime, especially through the associated series of ‘true crime’ books and the TV series Underbelly (Gregg and Wilson Reference Gregg and Wilson2010). In a sign of perennial tensions around the Victoria Market racket, Melbourne boss Liborio Benvenuto was targeted unsuccessfully by a car bomb in 1988, while Vincenzo Muratore’s son Alfonso was shot dead in 1992 after attempting to break away from the Honoured Society’s market produce monopoly, which even extended to national supermarket chain Coles (Herald Sun, 25 March 2013). And yet ’Ndrangheta involvement in the ‘Underbelly’ saga seems at first strangely peripheral.

Alphonse Gangitano, Mick Gatto, Pasquale Barbaro and Mario Condello were young second-generation Italian criminals strongly associated with Melbourne’s cosmopolitan ‘Little Italy’ in Carlton’s Lygon Street, where reliable reports suggest that the ’Ndrangheta pizzo (extortion payment) was still being collected from Italian businesses recently. Although born in Calabria (Anoia, Gioia Tauro region), Condello migrated to Australia as a child, whilst Gangitano, Barbaro and Gatto were all Australian-born. As in Lupo’s account of hybridised interethnic second-generation crime syndicates in the US (2008; Ianni and Ianni Reference Ianni and Reuss Ianni1972), the ‘Carlton Crew’ were distinguished from earlier and more traditional Italo-Australian criminals by their status as public celebrities, and by their close collaboration with non-Italian criminals.Footnote ¹² Carlton Crew leader Gangitano is said to have been from a ‘respectable’ (ie non-’Ndrangheta) Italian family (Silvester and Rule Reference Silvester and Rule2004, 22; Gatto and Noble Reference Gatto and Noble2010, 125f), while Barbaro was from a well-known Australian ’Ndrangheta dynasty. Although there is no clear evidence that Condello, Barbaro or Gatto were actual ’Ndrangheta affiliates, Condello, a deregistered lawyer shot dead in 2006, was later described by Italian Antimafia Commission head Roberto Centaro as an important ’Ndrangheta money launderer with ‘criminal ties not limited to the Australian context but associated with the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta with all its connections across Europe and North America’ (The Age, 17April 2006; Moor Reference Moor2009, 332–335), an observation which seems to confirm Australia’s ongoing significance as a staging post in the ’Ndrangheta’s vast global money laundering operations.

There is no necessary reason to doubt the sincerity of Mick Gatto’s claims in his confessional autobiography (Gatto and Noble Reference Gatto and Noble2010) that despite an early life of petty crime, he never engaged in drug trafficking, and has since ‘gone straight’ and devoted himself to legitimate business activities as a ‘labour negotiator’. Yet his claim quoted above that ‘the mafia doesn’t exist in Australia’ simply does not bear scrutiny: Gatto’s Calabrian-born father had a stall cheek-by-jowl with numerous Melbourne ’Ndrangheta members in the Victoria Market,Footnote ¹³ and while working in the markets in the early 1960s, Gatto was himself on friendly terms with ’Ndrangheta hard man Domenico De Marte, describing him as ‘a friend who was in business partnership with my father at the markets for a while’ (Gatto and Noble Reference Gatto and Noble2010, 24); in 2008, Gatto also famously attended the funeral of Melbourne ’Ndrangheta boss Rosario Gangemi, doubtless ‘to show respect’ (Sydney Morning Herald, 8 July 2008).

‘Australian ’Ndrangheta’: the political project

The cultivation of political cover for criminal activities has long been intrinsic to the entire mafia project (Paoli Reference Paoli2003; Lupo Reference Lupo2008). In Australia, ’Ndrangheta actors have successfully transplanted traditional ‘mafia skills’ (Varese Reference Varese2013) through the cultivation of police officers (Bottom Reference Bottom1988; Woodward Reference Woodward1979; Campbell et al. Reference Campbell, Toohey and Pinwill1992), judges (Small and Gilling Reference Small and Gilling2011, 145, 148–150), public officials (Campbell et al. Reference Campbell, Toohey and Pinwill1992, 269–274), and politicians. Domenic Perre, the probable author of the 1994 Adelaide NCA bombing, was even successful in charming an obvious ‘sea green incorruptible’ like his local MP, former SA Premier Lynn Arnold,Footnote ¹⁴ into writing him a character reference. In a later police wiretap from jail, Perre told his wife to ‘go and see Lynn Arnold and tell him that unless he intervenes in my case, no Italian will vote for him’ (Madigan Reference Madigan2013, 147f).

It remains a moot point whether ’ndranghetisti in either Italy or Australia are actually able to determine electoral outcomes as effectively as they might wish gullible politicians to believe (for a sceptical view, see Sciarrone, ed. 2014). Yet as in Italy, Australian ’ndranghetisti certainly appear to have been able to achieve political leverage by trading on a perception that they can indeed organise the Italian vote in some Australian electorates (Bennetts and Sergi Reference Bennetts and Sergi2015). Veteran investigators Bob Bottom and Clive Small both believe that these circumstances may explain the conspicuous lack of zeal shown by Australian politicians in their pursuit of the ’Ndrangheta.

Apart from Grassby’s seat of Riverina, there is also clear evidence of ’Ndrangheta penetration of the Belconnen (Canberra) and Fairfield (Sydney) branches of the Australian Labor Party, the traditional beneficiary of the migrant vote since the 1970s (Campbell et al. Reference Campbell, Toohey and Pinwill1992; Small and Gilling Reference Small and Gilling2010). In his maiden speech in the NSW Parliament in 1996, former ALP Minister and MP for Fairfield Joe TripodiFootnote ¹⁵ publicly thanked Fairfield ALP branch supporters Pat Sergi (Platì) and Tony Mittiga. Sergi, a major long-time ALP donor, friend and business partner of Tripodi, was named in the 1979 Woodward Royal Commission as a mastermind of the Griffith cell’s money laundering operations in Sydney, while Mittiga’s older brother, Francesco, facilitated Robert Trimbole’s 1981 escape from Australia by arranging false passports while he was working in the Commonwealth Department of Immigration (Small and Gilling Reference Small and Gilling2010, 23–25). In 1995, the NSW ALP even seriously considered running Sergi as its Fairfield candidate. For Small, the NSW ALP has been ‘more anxious to hang onto the ethnic vote than investigate the party’s connection to organised crime’ (2010, 14). A year after the 1994 NCA bombing, the NCA released a report (National Crime Authority 1995) which (remarkably) found no evidence for the existence of an Italian organised crime group in Australia on the Italian model, and was denounced by Bob Bottom in the Brisbane Courier Mail as ‘a blatant sop to ethnic sensitivities for what must rank as base political motives’ (quoted in Small and Gilling Reference Small and Gilling2010, 28).

Despite traditional ’Ndrangheta ties to the ALP, there is clear evidence of a more recent shift to cultivating political links with the centre-right Liberal Party, as highlighted sensationally in a 2015 Fairfax/ABC TV Four Corners investigation. In the wake of the world’s biggest ever ecstasy bust in Melbourne in 2008, it was recalled that one of those arrested, Francesco Madafferi (Oppido Mamertina), although previously charged over ’Ndrangheta activities in Italy, had been granted Australian permanent resident status three years previously while facing deportation, following concerted political lobbying in the Italian community (Ciconte and Macrì Reference Ciconte and Macrì2009, 44ff). The AFP later investigated claims that Liberal Party Federal Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone had been influenced to reverse Madafferi’s earlier deportation order in 2005 ‘on humanitarian grounds’ by alleged donations of $100,000 to the Victorian branch of the Liberal Party by Calabrian businessmen in Melbourne and Sydney, who also lobbied several other key Victorian Liberal figures on Madafferi’s behalf. The lobbyists included Pat Sergi, Madafferi’s brother Antonio, Sydney furniture entrepreneur Nick Scali (San Martino di Taurianova), and former Soccer Australia President Tony Labozzetta (Sydney Morning Herald, 20 February 2009). A full-page open letter to the previous Minister for Immigration on behalf of Madafferi had earlier been published in Italian language papers La Fiamma and Il Globo by aspiring politician and now Italian Senator for Oceania, Nino Randazzo (Ciconte and Macri Reference Ciconte and Macrì2009, 46f). The ease with which ’ndranghetisti appear able to infiltrate the Australian political process was further confirmed by subsequent revelations that the son of an alleged Adelaide boss completed an internship at the Australian Embassy in Rome, while Vanstone was later serving as Ambassador to Italy. In 2007, the Adelaide boss had reportedly been tracked by Italian police through Rome in the company of then Rome ’Ndrangheta boss Francesco Frisina (Sydney Morning Herald, 31 July 2015).

In the wake of several gunshot attacks on Melbourne pizza bars in 2013, The Age (8 March 2014) cited confidential police reports claiming that the ‘Honoured Society’ in Melbourne was still active in cannabis trafficking and extortion rackets targeting pizza restaurants, supermarkets and food wholesalers across the city. Society members, it was alleged, put pressure on business owners to give them a share of their businesses at below market value, or in exchange for ‘protection’. The organisation’s head was identified as Francesco Madafferi’s brother, multimillionaire businessman Antonio Madafferi, who has long been involved in Victorian Liberal fundraising events, and who is considered capable of influencing the Italian vote in Melbourne’s south-east. Madafferi associate, Victorian Labor figure and local councillor Michael Teti was expelled from the party in the wake of the Four Corners exposé, after facing firearms charges and allegations of ALP ethnic branch stacking (The Age, 31 July 2015).

In 2011, Italian and Australian media reported that Italian anti-mafia prosecutors were seeking the extradition of Tony Vallelonga (Nardodipace), former Mayor of the City of Stirling in Perth, WA. On the basis of secretly-taped conversations in 2009 between Vallelonga and maestro di giornata of the Siderno locale Giuseppe Commisso, Italian prosecutors in the 2011 Il Crimine 2 case (Tribunale di Reggio Calabria 2011, 577–591) and the Italian Direzione Nazionale Antimafia (2012, 124ff) have argued that Vallelonga was recognised in Calabria as a key figure in the Australian ’Ndrangheta, attended a secret meeting of senior affiliates in Serra San Bruno, and had also sought validation from Commisso as boss of the Siderno ‘mother’ locale of his decision to oppose an attempted ‘breakaway’ locale in Australia (for Commisso’s role as a kind of ’Ndrangheta ‘Minister for External Affairs’, see Gratteri and Nicaso Reference Gratteri and Nicaso2013, 160). Ciconte and Macrì (Reference Ciconte and Macrì2009, 7) have cited evidence from an Australian police informant for annual national meetings at which an Australian capo crimine was elected, his name communicated to the organisation in Calabria, and who then played a representative role with the mother organisation in Italy. One of Rosengreen’s informants stated (1958) that Melbourne boss Domenico Italiano had at one point acted as ‘national head’ of the organisation. If Italian investigators’ analysis of the Vallelonga/Commisso recordings is correct, it would suggest that Australian locali continue to maintain close administrative ties with ‘mother locali’ back in Calabria, as reported by Sciarrone for Germany and Northern and Central Italy.Footnote ¹⁶

Notes on contributor

Dr Stephen Bennetts is an Honorary Research Associate in University College London’s School of European Languages, Culture and Society and a member of UCL’s Australian ’Ndrangheta Research Group. He graduated from the University of Western Australia in 2013 with a PhD in Anthropology on the contemporary Southern Italian folk revival, after carrying out extensive ethnographic fieldwork in rural Calabria, Campania and Salento. He has also worked since 1994 as a consultant anthropologist for Aboriginal organisations in Northern Australia on Aboriginal heritage and native title matters.