Teenage guns-for-hire and off-shore kingpins are the targets of an organised crime reform package responding to an outbreak of public and disastrous gangland activity.
After reckless gunmen killed innocent targets on back-to-back days, NSW Premier Chris Minns said state and federal governments were working together to better chase exiled and fugitive criminal string-pullers.
Mr Minns said he would table legal changes in parliament including new aggravated offences for gangland conspiracy and attempted murder.
Nabbing criminal leaders accused of tasking young assailants with their hits while holed up overseas has proved challenging for Australian police.
A system of Interpol arrest alerts - known as Red Notices - are authorities' best bet for hunting down fugitives in countries where Australia does not have extradition agreements.
NSW escalated concerns to federal Attorney-General Michelle Rowland about challenges in applying for the alerts, Mr Minns said.
“I’m now confident in coming weeks and months, you’ll see a lot more activity in that space and we’re grateful the federal government’s working with us,” he said.
The proposed aggravated offences would cover those involved in planning a hit, or attempting to persuade another to carry one out.
Conspiring to kill would carry a life sentence under the laws.
Using a digital platform to arrange or facilitate a serious contract crime would also become an offence.
The children’s serious indictable offences act would be expanded to cover acts linked to organised crimes, including public shootings and firebombings.
The NSW government also wants to introduce an interim criminal restriction scheme.
Serious Crime Prevention Orders allow the Supreme Court to impose restrictions on suspected criminals’ associations, travel and technology access under an expansion of existing laws.
A $15 million spend will boost state police’s ability to access and copy encrypted devices and platforms linked to organised crime investigations.
Mr Minns accepted the public would judge laws not on intent but on outcomes in tackling Sydney's organised crime problem.
"There (is) a disregard for human life I haven’t really seen before,” the premier said.
A man in his 40s was gunned down outside a west Sydney duplex where he was working on Wednesday afternoon, with a university student shot dead in his family’s southwest Sydney home on Tuesday.
Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane accused the government of descending into chaos while Mr Minns was in India last week on a mission to boost NSW's ties with the nation.
During the premier's absence, Police Minister Yasmin Catley on Thursday said she did not accept gangland crime was out of control.
“We had a police minister who couldn’t seem to even understand off the back of the murders of two innocent people that crime was out of control on their watch,” Ms Sloane said.
The Greens’ justice spokeswoman Sue Higginson accused the premier of eroding civil liberties in response to crime.
Increased powers and numbers of incarcerated youths had failed to stop recent criminal murders or the causes of organised crime, she said.
“The premier’s ‘adult crime, adult time’ rhetoric helps no one, and appears to be a shameless attempt to beat One Nation in a race to the bottom based on zero evidence,” Ms Higginson said.
Legislation remains before parliament for a raft of previously announced changes aimed at cracking down on organised crime, including enabling police to compel suspects to unlock their phones and increased penalties for refusing to do so.
The government created new encrypted device offences and expanded unexplained wealth powers in 2025.
Over 2026, the Minns government has made further tweaks to penalties for public place shootings.
