Convicted cocaine dealer Damien Paul Barbi, 37, asks the Northern Territory’s highest court to cut his jail term

A MAN jailed for up to six years after a sophisticated police surveillance operation caught him importing Colombian cocaine into Darwin says his jail sentence should be cut.

Damien Barbi (left) was sentenced to nine years jail for major drug importation charges. Picture: Supplied

A MAN jailed for up to six years after a sophisticated police sting caught him importing Colombian cocaine into Darwin says his jail sentence should be cut.

Damien Paul Barbi, 37, was last year jailed for six years with a non-parole period of four years, two months and two weeks, after pleading guilty to supplying a commercial quantity of a schedule one drug.

His girlfrield, Emma Edbrooke, 34, was handed a suspended sentence for her “relatively peripheral” role in the operation.

The 280g of cocaine Barbi imported had a street value of around $120,000.

In the Court of Criminal Appeal on Friday, Barbi’s barrister, Jon Tippett QC, argued his client should have his “manifestly excessive” jail sentence cut, largely because a similar sentence was handed out to a meth dealer in a landmark 2017 case involving more a more sophisticated supply network and a more than $300,000 worth of that drug.

Mr Tippett said the other man’s meth operation was “becoming industrial” in comparison to his client’s cocaine “cottage industry”, and that the courts in the Northern Territory had recognised meth to be a “particularly dangerous and insidious drug”, a description which did not apply to cocaine.

“(In the other case) business is booming and the reason for that is that the drug (methamphetamine) is treated quite differently in the market,” Mr Tippett said.

He said meth was more frequently abused drug than cocaine and that meth caused more problems in the Northern Territory community.

He said only two or three big time cocaine dealers had been prosecuted in Darwin in recent years.

“If (cocaine) is not prevalent then why have we got the same sentence?” he said.

“What is happening here is we have got a less prevalent offence with a business operation that generates far less in terms of profit.”

He said the fact the drugs came from a cocaine cartel in Colombia didn’t make Barbi’s crimes worse, because “all drugs come from overseas”.

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Director of Public Prosecutions Jack Karczewski QC said “ticking off items” was not a proper way to assess the seriousness of Barbi’s offending compared to the other case.

The panel of three judges, Chief Justice Michael Grant, Justice Judith Kelly and Justice Peter Barr, will deliver their appeal decision at a later date.