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If Premier Jacinta Allan wants to step out from the shadow of her long-term predecessor, she needs to seek the advice not of veteran party strategists or highly paid consultants, but of a man who has spent most of his life navigating a profession marginally more ruthless than politics – former mob boss Michael Franzese.

Allan will want to set the agenda away from failed Commonwealth Games, expensive holes in the ground and branch-stacking claims – and what better way than to jump on board the law-and-order bus?

If you haven’t noticed, we are in the middle of an underworld war, with murders carried out in crowded public areas, houses shot up every week and tobacco shops torched every few days (29 and counting).

In the past three months, we have had three very public organised crime hits – each more brazen and more dangerous to bystanders.

In August, Mohammed Akbar Keshtiar, known as Afghan Ali, was shot dead in South Yarra. In September, Gavin “Capable” Preston was gunned down while having a coffee in Keilor, and in October, it was Robert Issa in a crowded Craigieburn shopping centre car park.

We have a major drug syndicate run out of prison, a gangster shot in a funeral procession and crooks trying to snatch the body of a rival’s sister from her family crypt. Movements between bikie groups now rival AFL trade week for controversy.

Robert Issa was this month shot dead in a Craigieburn car park.Credit: The Age

There is a power struggle over the illicit tobacco industry that is a huge business. Consider this: a container of illicit tobacco containing 15 million sticks can land in Melbourne for $250,000, then be sold for a profit of $10 million.

One of two rival syndicates makes $10 million a week from the trade, according to intelligence sources who can’t be named but will occasionally share rare information over a rare steak with an aged reporter quaffing an aged shiraz.

What is clear, is that there is no shortage of young men happy to kill gangsters for a price with little concern for the response from rival gangs or police. Some were provided with false passports to flee overseas before they could be arrested.

So where does former New York mafia captain Michael Franzese fit in? When speaking to The Age last week, Franzese made it clear the only way to stop mob wars is to have a set of laws that makes the crooks more frightened of the good guys than the bad ones.

Former New York mob boss Michael Franzese could make an effective political adviser.Credit: Markson Sparks

He told us that when law enforcement started to use anti-racketeering laws effectively, with the threat of 100-year jail terms, they turned insiders into informers.

“They began to fear the government more than the mob. Every big case is based on flipping people [into becoming informers].”

This means the premier should ditch the high-vis vest for a ballistic one, and assure the people her government will provide the tools for the cops and the courts to strike back.

If Allan chooses to go Eliot Ness on the mobsters, here are 10 innovations to turn the tide:

It is hard to blame smokers, sick of paying a massive tax to fund their legal habit, for seeking cheaper blackmarket products, but this is classic organised crime. Find a market and provide a product, whether it be sex, booze, gambling or tobacco.

When NSW Police made arrests over the illicit tobacco industry, the investigation started by tracing money used for terrorism.

Last year, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission stated: “Intelligence on the Illicit Tobacco Taskforce’s operations over the first three years clearly indicates that serious and organised crime groups engage in illicit tobacco importations to generate profit and use it as a platform for further illicit activities including drug importations, and terrorism.”

We have an underworld war about every 20 years as the crooks become more interested in violent paybacks than giant pay days.

Premier Jacinta Allan: We suggest she loses the high-vis vest and borrow a police one to signal her government’s crackdown on mobsters.Credit: Jason South

“When guys are getting killed on the streets, it is usually a power struggle,” Franzese told us. “A war is bad for business. When it is in the public and in your face, law enforcement has to respond.”

But this war is different. Previously, gangsters accepted they were part of a deadly game. If they were caught by the cops, they went to jail and if they were caught by their rivals, they went to the morgue.

Some members of these Middle Eastern crime gangs believe that they are not part of society and the laws don’t apply to them. They are sticklers for some rules, happy to accept social welfare and apply for legal aid, while exploiting others, such as avoiding tobacco tax.

The gangs have intimidated witnesses and, in one case, made an associate confess to a murder he didn’t commit to protect a key family member. In 2009, when Ali Chaouk murdered Mohammed Haddara, subordinate Ahmed Hablas confessed he was the shooter. Hablas was acquitted at trial and Chaouk was convicted.

In some suburbs, local police will not pull up cars driven by known crime family members because the driver will text a group of steroid-filled meatheads who will turn up attempting to intimidate the uniformed cops filming what they claim is harassment.

It is part of a plan to deter police action that includes living in fortified family compounds.

There is another difference – public apathy. There is a shooting, a headline and then we move on. After all, someone with Gavin “Capable” Preston’s background was hardly in line for a state funeral.

This can and will change if an innocent bystander is killed in one of these hits carried out by idiots. And many of these tobacco outlets that have been torched have people living directly above the shops.

Police examine the van in which Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro were murdered.Credit: Paul Harris

In 2003, when a gunman shot and killed gangster Jason Moran and his sidekick, Pasquale Barbaro, in front of parents and children at the Essendon North Auskick, it became the line-in-the-sand moment. It led to the establishment of the Purana taskforce which flipped insiders and stopped the war.

The question for Premier Allan and her advisers is, will you learn from history?

Naked City – the book. Pan Macmillan. Available October 31. What the critics say: “John Silvester’s defamatory claptrap is puerile and overblown fiction” – convicted murderer Hugo Rich.

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