Another Pasquale Barbaro put behind bars

As far as unlucky names go, Pasquale Barbaro is up there with the unluckiest of all.

A Melbourne Pasquale - who prefers to go by Patrick or Pat - has been jailed for nearly eight years for trafficking ecstasy, ice and cannabis.

The 30-year-old must serve at least five years after he pleaded guilty to three serious drug charges, and other weapons charges.

In Victoria's County Court he admitted having more than one kilogram of methamphetamine stashed in a cereal box hidden in a garage wall.

He was also found with nearly a kilogram of MDMA and 186 grams of cannabis when police raided his Sydenham home in June 2018, along with guns, ammunition, jewellery suspected of being proceeds of crime and multiple mobile phones.

Listening devices recorded more than a dozen conversations between Barbaro and others about drugs, drugs use, trafficking and firearms.

Another Melbourne Pasquale Barbaro is also serving time - a life sentence for the import of what was then a world record haul of ecstasy pills, imported from Italy in tomato tins in 2007.

Three others with the same name are dead - one was killed in a 2016 gangland hit in Sydney, one in Brisbane in 1990s and perhaps most notoriously, another alongside Jason Moran at a children's football match during Melbourne's gangland wars in 2003.

The court heard the current Pasquale Barabro had lived through his father and struggled to formulate his own identity.

Judge Michael McInerney found he had a disturbing, dysfunctional and disruptive upbringing.

He said Barbaro had seen his arrest in mid-2018 as a blessing.

Barbaro had been addicted to ice for a decade before the offending, with experts finding the role of parent he took on in the household had led to a psychological dependence on drugs.

He spent three months as an inpatient in a rehab facility and has remained off drugs since then, the judge said.

Barbaro's lawyer John Dickinson tried to argue that Barbaro's situation - his rehabilitation from drugs, his partner being weeks away from having a baby and his severe asthma - meant he should avoid a lengthy jail term.

Judge McInerney accepted there would be a significant impact on Barbaro's children and partner, particularly with the impending birth, as well as on him not being there.

He acknowledged Barbaro had already been through a 14-day isolation period entering prison and that family visits would not be allowed for some time.

But the judge said Barbaro's offending had been serious and imposed a prison sentence of seven years and 10 months.