Barbaro, a Griffith, NSW-based scion of one of the pre-eminent families of the Calabrian-Mafia, apparently styled himself as the glue that stuck the Australian Mafia together. Francesco 'Little Trees' Barbaro confronts AFP officers outside his son Pat's Griffth property. "Frank Barbaro is significant in that he maintains strong associations across so many states and groups. He regularly travelled by vehicle and plane around to facilitate these contacts and activities," the report says. "He showed particularly strong travel patterns between Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, the Gold Coast and Sydney ... a number of the common links may not be able to be maintained without ... his continued shuttling between states." But even before Barbaro was imprisoned in 2003 for trafficking methamphetamines, the Italian Mafia was suffering the same crisis of tradition that all migrant communities face.

The number of funerals alone suggests the older generation was dying off, some from natural causes, to be replaced by their sons. With them went the old ways, the infamous Mafia codes of "omerta", or silence, as well as respect, honour and keeping it in the family. Park meeting with Madafferi and Pasquale 'Pat' Barbaro (in green t-shirt). The big families were opening up new businesses: real estate, cafes, fruit and vegetables, even seafood importing. Family members were gaining employment in government, the communications industry, as well as transport and freight logistics, bookmaking, racing, car dealerships and retail. A National Crime Authority report in the mid-1990s even went so far as to say the old Mafia no longer existed in Australia. Australian police uncovered a world record ecstasy shipment.

"The local derivations of the 'Ndrangheta [if that is the correct name for it] are essentially social organisations, or a type of fraternity which facilitates, among other functions, contact between criminals while not being a purely criminal organisation as such." That diagnosis, however, appeared to be premature. A few years later, the 2003 joint agency report, obtained by a joint Fairfax Media and Four Corners investigation, drew an Australia-wide picture of an organisation which, while it was changing, was still alive and kicking, and still had not gone straight. Even in their legitimate business activities, the 2003 report notes, Italian Organised Crime groups "use violence, murder and intimidation tactics to facilitate" business. Those tactics "have not become obsolete although in some instances they have been outsourced to 'specialists' such as [Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs]".

At least some of that activity was directed, as it always has been, to maintaining internal discipline. "Members of the network have occasionally been apprehended and imprisoned, but on the whole internal wrangling appears to have exacted a higher toll, as family members are murdered not infrequently," the 2003 report drily notes. Many apparently legitimate activities - freight, nightclubs, cafes, wineries, pizza shops - were actually fronts for drug trafficking or money laundering. There is only so much time you can spend pushing dirty money through the pokies and backing horses at the Griffith Ex-Serviceman's Club, or, increasingly, at Jupiter's Casino on the Gold Coast. Some main-street Mafia businesses were even more clearly linked to the old ways. In South Australia in 2001, for example 16 out of 77 hydroponics shops "were found to be owned by or associated with members of Italian organised crime networks". Many things had changed.

"Whilst the traditional view of IOC groups is that they are based upon strong familial ties, increasingly, non-cultural specific relationships and motivations, such as money, are replacing these aspects of IOC," the report said, leading to a more "fluid, open configuration". Take the Queensland branch. It was described in 2003 report as "fragmenting". "The traditionally rigid control over involvement outside the Italian circles does not exist any more" as ethnicity and "commodity types" were becoming "more flexible," and Aussies and bikies were collaborating in the business, sometimes forging links through inter-marriage. In NSW, where the Griffith-based Mafia families, including the Barbaros, have long been central, and cannabis has been the drug of choice, "non-traditional" drugs such as amphetamine, cocaine and heroin were being traded. For instance, the man behind the world's biggest ecstasy importation, into Melbourne in 2007, was Griffith-born Pat Barbaro, who is now in jail (and is also an associate of the funeral-going Frank Barbaro). Pat Barbaro's elderly father, Francesco "Little Trees" Barbaro, was named in a royal commission in the 1970s as a mafia marijuana grower.

Mafia families have also made non-traditional links to other ethnic crime groups, including opportunistic associations with Asian and Middle Eastern gangs. But some things had not changed. Cannabis, although now increasingly grown using hydroponics, was still "widely regarded as the 'core' business ... generating large volumes of cash and relatively ... little proactive law enforcement action". The world's biggest ecstasy haul, imported to Melbourne in 2007, had come from a port in Italy disguised as tinned tomatoes. But when times were tough, old habits were always available, the 2003 report said.

"A number of the older IOC figures in NSW were identified as desperate for money. They seemed to view re-diversifying their business back into cannabis as a fast way to get cash when they were under pressure." In this confusing world, the widely-travelled Frank Barbaro, son of godfather Pasquale, brother of Joe, nephew of Rocco and Antonio, appears to embody tradition. He emerges from the 2003 police report as one of the Mafia's most compelling characters, who was still "observed to use notions of honour and respect". Except, with Frank, nothing was so straightforward. He was "driven by greed", the report says, and even the old ways could be commoditised. "He was aggressive in demanding respect. He used instances where he claimed to have had his honour or respect violated as jumping off point for threats of violence and demands for 'fines'."

Nobody else demanded fines in the same way, the report found. Not even family could stand between Frank and a dollar. He was "loathe to delegate ... even to trusted associates, if he had to pay those delegated". He would "actively seek to cut out the middle man to increase his profit". In the end, his fellow mafioso stopped introducing him to drug suppliers because he would simply cut them out of the action. All that spadework at funerals and still just a greedy crim. The more things change, the more they stay the same.