The Social Reality of Organised Crime in Australia: Lawfare, Security, and the Politics of Exclusion in the Settler-Colonial State

Abstract

This thesis critically examines the legal, political, and social construction of organised crime within the Australian settler-colonial context, using Operation Ironside as a case study. It interrogates how the state defines, enforces, and narrates organised crime to serve broader interests of sovereignty, economic control, and racialised securitisation. While dominant legal and criminological frameworks present organised crime as an objective phenomenon, this research argues that its definition is inherently political, operating as a mechanism for legitimising state power, managing internal threats, and criminalising economic activities that fall outside state-sanctioned financial systems. The study is structured around four key dimensions of organised crime as a legal and political construct: (1) the historical and contemporary formulation of organised crime laws in Australia and their colonial and imperial legacies; (2) the enforcement of these definitions through surveillance, intelligence-led policing, and preemptive legal measures; (3) the sentencing patterns and outcomes of individuals prosecuted under organised crime frameworks, with a particular focus on ethnicity and class; and (4) the media’s role in constructing public perceptions of organised crime, reinforcing moral panics and justifying extraordinary state powers. Through statistical analysis of outcomes from Operation Ironside and critical discourse analysis of media reporting, the thesis reveals patterns of racial and class-based disparities in sentencing, as well as the alignment between media narratives and state securitisation agendas. By drawing on critical legal studies, criminology, and postcolonial theory, this thesis 3 4 situates organised crime within the broader apparatus of the settler-colonial state. It highlights how organised crime laws function as tools of governance, enabling legal exceptions that expand state authority and consolidate economic hierarchies. The findings contribute to contemporary debates on criminalisation, surveillance, and state power, challenging the assumed neutrality of organised crime frameworks and advocating for a more critical, historically situated understanding of crime, security, and justice