Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill

I move, That the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill be now read a first time. The Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill is a local bill from the Hutt City Council, which, if people are not aware, is for the area of Lower Hutt. It is a bill that is coming in following, I think, one of the most extensive campaigns on graffiti during the local body elections on the part of Ray Wallace, who was successfully elected mayor at the last local body elections. I think it is fair to say that there were several points of differentiation in the campaign, but graffiti was one of them that the public took to heart, and one of the things that Mayor Wallace promised was to attempt to get as much of the graffiti off as possible down in the city, both from public and from private places. He has made considerable progress in this, and this bill is, I think, part of a bigger approach. There has been money budgeted for painting out graffiti. There has been a positive approach with young people in order to attempt to divert them from doing negative graffiti into doing things that are more constructive, like murals and painting. One of the areas that, in fact, has been there for some time is this superb mural in the old village at Wainuiōmata of Tana Umaga and Piri Weepu, which has been done by the young local artists. It is absolutely clear that no one goes near that mural with any question of any graffiti, because it is something that is held proud to the hearts of the people at Wainuiōmata. It is something of their favourite sons done mainly by a number of young people.

The Hutt does have a graffiti problem; there is no doubt about that. I think many communities do. There have been indexes, and people do measures, and it is fair to say that we are not as bad as the old Auckland City and some other parts of Auckland, but it is something that residents are unhappy with. As I say, a lot of progress has been made. One of the areas that we did discuss before the local body elections—and this bill was introduced last year—was the problem that the council had with private owners, often absentee owners, quite often owners of buildings that are semi-abandoned. There are places where there have been businesses in the past. Very occasionally, sometimes, there are houses that have been burnt out or have not been used and they have become the target for vandals and for graffiti. The problem has been—and the problem is—that there is not a right for the council to go on to the land and to paint out the graffiti in order to ensure that the area looks better.

Just to make it absolutely clear, I am working on the assumption that people understand that this bill will go to the Local Government and Environment Committee at the conclusion of this.

There was a problem with privately owned property, and we do have within the Hutt a number of absentee landlords.

💬 Hon Tau Henare: State houses.

It is not so much houses; it is more often old commercial buildings. With the development of some of the more successful malls, there are some old shops around that are not used.

💬 Chris Hipkins: Housing New Zealand is an absentee landlord these days.

With the Housing New Zealand Corporation, you might have to go to Mumbai to get the phone answered, but that is not the point of this bill. The Summary Offences Act does work quite well at catching offenders, but it does not give permission to councils to go on to that private land.

The way this bill has been set out, the requirements are pretty clear. There is a requirement to remove graffiti but, before that, notice has to be given. Ten days’ notice has to be given. One of the problems sometimes is trying to find the owners, and therefore there are some requirements to give the notice in writing and to be specific about what the council intends to do and when it intends to do it. It has to make reasonable attempts to consult. When it serves a notice, it has to either give it to the person or send it to the person by fax or email at the latest address, and also do that for a company.

I want to acknowledge the support that was indicated earlier by the other Hutt member, Holly Walker. In fact, formerly, there was actually a third Hutt member. He is not currently in the House but is just waiting to get in with someone going to London and someone else dying, a couple of heartbeats away: Mr Quinn. There was a political unanimity on this, but Holly Walker has pointed out—and it is something that I would like the select committee to consider and look carefully at—the fact that graffiti is not defined within this bill. There is a question about whether it needs to be, whether, in fact, it is defined in some other places, or whether there is a common law interpretation of graffiti that will actually work for the purpose. As I have indicated to the member, the short answer is that I do not know, and it seems to be a very good thing for the select committee to have a good look at to make sure that it is satisfied. I think it is fair to say that neither the Hutt City Council nor I have such ownership of, or are so wedded to, the exact words in this bit of legislation that we would not be happy about having a change to make it effective and to make it clear—for example, the Umaga and Weepu mural, which I indicated before is on an abandoned building, on something that has been left. There might have been some marginality about the legality of doing it, but I would not want anyone to go painting over that mural, because, in my opinion certainly, I do not regard it as graffiti. There are graffiti arts and graffiti artists, and it is a matter of working through that and making sure that it works well.

I would like to conclude in the way that I started by acknowledging Ray Wallace—the mayor—the work that he has done in this area, and the leadership that he has shown. I do want to commend this bill to the House.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Can I refer you to Standing Order 283(1), “Speech of member moving first reading”. It states: “The member moving the bill’s first reading must, on the commencement of that member’s speech … nominate the select committee to consider the bill,”. Listening to a very interesting speech by the Hon Trevor Mallard, he did refer to the select committee but not at the commencement of his speech.

I think it is fair to say that it was a rather long introduction to get to that point, and I apologise to the House for keeping the member waiting.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The point of order is, of course, correct. The member has apologised, I think. The key ingredient was that it was done, so I think we will just accept the apology and move on.

I rise to support this Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill, which is sponsored by the Hon Trevor Mallard. The phenomena of graffiti and tagging on public and private property in cities have become a real problem in the 20th and 21st centuries, although I have heard that they have identified graffiti in the ruins of Pompeii, so it is obviously not a new phenomenon.

But it challenges communities all around the world. Cities, suburbs, and communities that are dominated by graffiti-laden buildings look and feel unkempt and dangerous. It looks as if nobody cares. It looks as if nobody is engaged with or identified with the community. It looks like civil society is broken and is disordered. Neighbourhoods who look after each other make sure that their communities are clean and pleasant, and they react quickly to any damage to their streets, cleaning up tagging and graffiti as soon as possible. It is a bit of a vicious cycle: people behave badly in run-down - looking, graffiti-ridden communities, and run-down - looking, graffiti-ridden communities make people behave badly. So I do have sympathy with the Hutt City Council and support its struggle to eradicate graffiti in Lower Hutt.

The Hutt Valley has had its fair share—or perhaps more than its fair share—of graffiti, and the public have had enough of it, and it was interesting to hear Trevor Mallard talking about their local body elections, and how they campaigned on removing graffiti. I have to acknowledge that the council has worked hard to control the problem, but nobody really feels that it is making any progress. The council believes that to do the job properly it needs to be able to clean graffiti and tagging off private property. It is well known that the only way to deal with graffiti is to clean it off or paint it out as soon as possible. Those who enjoy tagging and damaging buildings also enjoy viewing their work and showing it off for a long time afterwards, so the biggest deterrent to graffiti is to clean it off immediately.

I note that since June 2011 the Hutt City Council has implemented a rapid response graffiti removal initiative, which commits to removing graffiti within 48 hours. That is a lot quicker than in the past, when it committed to 72 hours. So the Hutt City Council regularly and quickly cleans and removes graffiti from all public areas, but it has had no ability to tackle the issue of graffiti on private property.

This bill is designed to change all that. It empowers the Hutt City Council to clean graffiti and tagging off private property, whether it is a building, a structure, a road or paved surface, or even an object, as long as it is visible from a public place within the district of the Hutt City Council. However, before the work begins the council has to make every effort to consult with the owners of the buildings, and it was interesting to hear Trevor Mallard explaining that many of these buildings in the Hutt Valley are neglected and have absentee landlords. So it is important that it makes every attempt to contact the owners, and that it gives them 10 days’ notice in writing, supplying full details to clean up the property. Then, regardless of whether it hears from those owners or not, it can get on with the work.

So this bill does seem to be a logical and a sensible response to a difficult issue, which needs to be addressed. I look forward to being on the Local Government and Environment Committee as we look at this bill. We will take note from Trevor Mallard that we should consider the definition of “graffiti”. I commend this bill to the House.

I rise to support the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill, put forward by my very good colleague Trevor Mallard. Today I went to the reaccreditation of Wellington City as an International Safe Community. Our city was first designated as a safe community in 2006, and we became the 100th International Safe Community in the world. It required six criteria to be met for us to become designated such a city by the World Health Organization, and each of these criteria has a number of work streams. The reason why I have raised it is that one of them is graffiti management, and it is graffiti management that is seen to be part of providing a safe community. Under this international recognition a lot of work has gone into ensuring that you can eradicate graffiti, because graffiti is vandalism. It is vandalism of private property; it is vandalism of public property. There is no permission for graffiti; it is illegal.

We do know that here in the Wellington region it is costing us between $2 million and $3 million a year for graffiti. Many councils have put in place plans and programmes to clean up the public sites. I took note of what was said by the last speaker about the Hutt Valley in fact being able to speed up its clean-up of graffiti from 72 hours to 48 hours. The clean-up of graffiti is the key to eradicating it, because if you can get rid of it as fast as you can, then the taggers are not so keen to come back to the same place. They want to be seen; they want their so-called tag to be noticed.

But a problem for the Hutt, and one that does exist in other places but is particularly important in the Hutt, is the amount of tagging that takes place on private property. I am sure there are members of this House who have had their private property tagged. I certainly have: a brand new garage door, not yet painted, with graffiti right across it when you get up in the morning, which means you then have to set about to clean it up if you are a responsible person. Some people in private property do not mind so much. Under this bill a local authority will be able to go in and clean up graffiti off private property where it is an eyesore for the public. I think that is a very good move indeed. Nothing makes a community look worse than graffiti all over the walls of houses, fences, and dairies—anything that is private property—and people do not feel safe in communities where there is a lot of graffiti. So this bill does provide the ability for the council to enter private land and take any action necessary to remove graffiti on any property situated on that land.

It is not an approach that you would call heavy-handed or jackbooted local government, because there are a whole lot of measures that are put in place before, in fact, the graffiti can be removed. First of all, there has to be 10 days’ notice. The council has to give notice to the occupier of that land, it has to give it to them in writing, and it has to ensure that, in fact, it is delivered in a number of ways. It can be delivered in person, it can be delivered at the person’s last known address, it can be sent by prepaid postal address, it can be sent by fax and email, it can be posted to a person’s post office box, and so on. So every effort is made to ensure that the person who owns the private property is notified that it is going to be removed. But if that person does object, then the council will not be removing the graffiti; it will remain. So for those who are worried that local government is going to storm on to private property and start interfering with people’s private property, no, it will not; the safeguards are in this bill.

I think this is a local solution for a local problem, but probably something that other councils will be interested in looking at, because they too will have many private properties that are tagged and destroyed by the inane work of people who have got nothing better to do. Graffiti is vandalism, it is illegal, and I commend the member for bringing this local bill to the House.

It is my pleasure to take a call on the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill. I thought I would talk to the House a little about the history of why this bill is important to the Hutt City Council. In 2011 the National Research Bureau Communitrak results showed that 31 percent of the residents were unhappy with the amount of graffiti in their city. This dissatisfaction had increased by 10 percent from the previous year, and we know that residents perceive their city as unsafe when there is a lot of graffiti. So this is now considered a key issue for the residents in Lower Hutt.

The council recently performed a graffiti audit, and in this it was considered one of the worst areas in New Zealand. The prevalence of graffiti vandalism or tagging in the community signals a lack of social cohesion, perceptions of danger, and reduced property values for owners. Therefore it is detrimental to the people of the Hutt to have this amount of graffiti. But this legislation will not address the underlying causes of the graffiti; it addresses only the cleaning of that graffiti.

This council has worked hard to try to get rid of its graffiti. It has spent over $300,000 every year on the eradication of graffiti, but tagging has increased over the last 2 years. In fact, its contractor for the council has cleared more than 1,000 tags every month—1,000 tags every month. That is pretty incredible, and that does not include the utility companies taking away their tags, private property owners taking away their tags, and community groups going and eradicating the tags.

The council has also appointed a new graffiti coordinator, which is a positive step in the right direction. But it is running numerous programmes out in the Hutt. It has got many tools in its box already. It is educating people at various levels. It is running a programme through schools called Tag Free Kiwi. It is providing information to the community on how to report tagging to the council. It is promoting legitimate street art. It has formed the Wellington Regional Graffiti Forum, where the councils across the region have got together with the regional council and the police to try to work out what to do with graffiti problems. It has got effective reporting and database systems in place. And this is my favourite: it has Adopt-a-Spot, whereby a community can go out and adopt a spot, look after its spot, and eradicate its graffiti. Resene, which is a great company out in the Hutt, has come on board and provided the supply of free grey paint to these Adopt-a-Spot initiatives.

So the council has got a lot of tools in its tool box already, and this bit of legislation is one more tool in the tool box. The current legislation does not allow the council to go on to private property to clean up graffiti marks that are visible from a public place, so that is what this legislation enables the council to do. There are safeguards in place, so it cannot come on to your property unannounced. It has to serve 10 days’ notice to the property owner or occupier to tell them what its proposed plan is, when it is going to come on to the property, who is coming, and what they are going to do. So there are safeguards in place, and the owner can object to the proposed action. If an objection is made to the council, it will not take this proposed action.

I have some concerns that I think need to be teased out in the Local Government and Environment Committee. One of them is the definition of “graffiti”; it is not in the bill. The other is the question of who the owner-occupier is, who should be contacted, and who pays for this graffiti removal. Do you know the answer to that, Trevor?

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: The council.

The council is paying for it? That is great, so the council is going to pay for this.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Trying to collect off these people is just hopeless.

Yes, that would be right. So there is the question of who pays for this—and Trevor just cleared up that the council will pay for it—and on what grounds an owner-occupier can object. Is there a reasonableness test, or is it just that they object and there is no test for that?

The last issue, which was brought up in a bit of the explanatory note of the bill, is that there is no separate clause in the bill to compel the council to desist from the proposed action if an objection is received. I would like to see that teased out in the select committee process as well.

Then there is the issue of civil liability. If the council goes on to a property and does damage to the property there is no come-back, and I would like that teased out as well in the select committee process in terms of weathertightness, as some cleaning products can cause problems with building materials. I would like that teased out as well, but it is my pleasure to support this bill’s referral to the select committee. Thank you.

Mr Deputy Speaker, may I take this opportunity, first of all, to congratulate you and your fellow presiding officers, as this is the first time I have risen to speak on a bill in this House. I look forward to you holding us all to the very high standards expected of us by the New Zealand public.

It is a great pleasure to take my first call on a piece of legislation for the Hutt Valley, since that is my home, where I grew up, and where I stood as candidate in the recent election. I have had very productive conversations already with the Hon Trevor Mallard, who is sponsoring this bill, the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill, and with the Mayor of Lower Hutt, Ray Wallace, and I am confident that we can work constructively together to advance this legislation. The Greens broadly support this bill and will be supporting it to select committee. However, that support is not guaranteed past that stage, as there are a number of issues we would like to see teased out at the Local Government and Environment Committee, and a number of those have been referred to already.

We do acknowledge that graffiti is problematic, and particularly tagging is problematic, and in parts of Lower Hutt, and particularly in abandoned buildings, that is a real problem. We have heard that it is especially a problem on empty and abandoned buildings where the owners do not have the willingness or the inclination to do anything about cleaning it up. It is detrimental to residents’ perception of social cohesion in their neighbourhoods. It feeds concerns about safety and discourages community engagement, and, as we have heard, a number of residents have identified it as an issue that they feel is of concern. We know that swift removal of graffiti is the best way to discourage further, for example, competitive tagging, where a building has been tagged and other taggers come to add their tags as well.

However, when the House last considered local legislation to tackle graffiti, which was the very problematic Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill, we, the Green Party, found ourselves unable to support that legislation. It was very Draconian. It had a much wider reach than this particular bill, and provisions that we felt really scapegoated young people and were quite unacceptable. So I am pleased that this bill is not modelled on that more extensive bill.

There were some provisions in that bill—in fact, I had a look at the Hansard, and my former colleague Nandor Tanczos spoke in favour of those parts of that bill—that do what this bill does, which is allow council officers or council contractors on to private property for the purposes of cleaning up graffiti when the owners are unwilling or unable to do so themselves. Those are the types of provisions that the Green Party is happy to support in legislation dealing with graffiti removal. However, as I have mentioned, we do have problems with wider, more Draconian legislation, and I am very pleased that that is not the case with this legislation.

We do have, as has been alluded to already, a number of concerns that we hope will be addressed at the select committee stage, and our support is conditional on those being addressed. One we have heard is about the definition of “graffiti”, which is something I raised with Trevor Mallard and with the mayor earlier when the legislation was tabled. I do think it is important that it be defined. For example, the Manukau legislation I referred to earlier defines “marking graffiti” as “defacing property in any way”, whereas a dictionary definition of “graffiti” is “writings or drawings scribbled, scratched, or sprayed illicitly on a wall or other surface in a public place”. There is quite a big difference between those two definitions, and I think it is important to be clear so that types of expression are not captured that are not intended to be. I think it is good lawmaking to ensure that the terms that are crucial to the legislation are clearly defined, and I think it is very important that that is teased out at the select committee.

For example, we want to make sure that legitimate forms of political and artistic expression—like the mural referred to earlier, or for a property owner perhaps to display something on their fence that may make a political point, or draw on graffiti art techniques—are not considered graffiti for the purposes of this bill and removed by the council. I would also like to echo the concerns raised by the previous speaker about the protection from civil liability for council staff when they enter property to clean graffiti off. For example, if they were to accidentally drive their truck into the fence of the property owner, they would not be liable for the damages caused. I think that is unacceptable, so I would like to see that explored further.

Finally, I just want to acknowledge that there are forms of graffiti art that are legitimate forms of expression, and it is very important that in the discussion of this legislation we do not forget that. Thank you.

I think it is excellent that we will have Green Party representation on the Local Government and Environment Committee for the consideration of the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill. I think the Green Party is going to be particularly helpful when it comes time for the committee to discuss and clearly define what it is that we mean by “graffiti”. It was the previous speaker—

💬 Hon Nathan Guy: It’ll have to be broad.

Well, you see, that is the thing that this committee, with the assistance of the Green members, is going to be able to help us with. What is graffiti? Is graffiti painting? Yes, I think it is. Is graffiti crayon? Is it spray-paint? Is it brush strokes? Is it—

💬 Jami-Lee Ross: It might be stickers, too—stickers.

Is it stickers? Is graffiti stickers? Well, you know, I am very grateful that we have got the Green Party to assist us with this because I know that the Green Party has some experience with stickers as graffiti. The Green Party may not acknowledge that stickers are a form of graffiti, but I can tell you that during the pre-election period I had some experience with stickers on my billboards—my billboards, not any other party’s billboards. I rang up the Green Party chief of staff and I said “I have got a problem.” Do you know what? They are such fantastic people that that chief of staff of the Greens dispatched someone, and do you know what? The next day the stickers were all gone. So the Green Party is an excellent party and I certainly look forward to—

💬 Hon Nathan Guy: Have you got a Green movement in your electorate?

It is not a very fast movement. But the Green Party is very good at removing stickers.

This bill is kind of interesting because there are some things that we also need to, as my colleague said, tease out in the select committee, and that is the provision of 10 days’ notice before the local authority can go on to the property. I do wonder about that and I am interested in the view of the sponsoring member, Trevor Mallard, on that, because it seems to me, from the debate I have heard this evening, that the sooner you can remove graffiti, the more effective it is as a deterrent. Did I hear somebody in the House saying tonight that the Hutt City Council now has a 72-hour turn-round target for graffiti? If that is the case and if that is known, why is this bill talking about 10 days’ notice? It just does not seem to be a very good fit to me, so I am very interested to hear that.

We will support this bill to go to the select committee, but I wonder whether it is using a sledgehammer to squash a flea. People generally are pretty house-proud of private property, are they not? I think we need to have a really good look at the provisions in this bill and at how heavy-handed this bill is, but certainly we are prepared to support this bill to go to the select committee.

I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill, and I would like to commend the Hon Trevor Mallard, Mayor Ray Wallace of the Hutt City Council, and, indeed, the Hutt City Council itself for putting this forward.

Graffiti is a subject that is very dear to my heart, and, having been involved with local government for 9 years, it was a subject that I was very much involved in, both as a councillor and as the Mayor of North Shore. We were very proud on the North Shore to be one of the areas with the lowest rate of graffiti in the whole of Auckland, because we really did aim to knock it on the head. Can I at this stage commend, and give thanks to, the likes of the unTAG Trust and other trusts on the North Shore, and indeed in other parts of New Zealand that are involved in graffiti removal. Many of these trusts are supported by local authorities and local councils to remove the graffiti. Our policy at the time was removal of graffiti within 24 hours, and it was amazing how many—some of them volunteers—were out, with the support of the council and with the support of some of the paint companies too, to provide paint and that sort of thing, to paint over graffiti within a very short space of time. We were also the first council to introduce a database to graph the graffiti, keep a record of it, and build up a database of the offenders. By profiling the offenders and the graffiti, we could soon work out who were the regular culprits, and, in so doing, when they were finally caught, they could be taken to court and charged with a series of offences. Often, we were able to recover funds from them to rectify the costs to the ratepayers and to the city.

Where there is graffiti it breeds crime, and it is no wonder that in cities around the world where you see a lot of graffiti it goes hand in hand with crime. Therefore, there is an incentive to remove graffiti as fast as possible, to provide a better environment for the citizens and the residents of any city. People feel threatened and they feel unsafe in an area that has been tagged, and you will know when you go to certain areas that are heavily tagged that you feel a little bit more insecure. We had an experience, for instance—my wife and I—travelling down the rail corridor on one of the trains from Auckland to the central North Island. I was appalled by the amount of graffiti in the rail corridor heading out of Auckland. That train was mainly full of foreign tourists. We do have a Minister of Tourism, but I do not think he has probably ever taken a train out of Auckland and seen the amount of graffiti there is. Perhaps that is something that our Minister of Tourism could do. I cannot recall who he is, because he does not do a great deal in tourism, I believe. Perhaps the Minister of Tourism could put his mind to graffiti as well, as part of his portfolio, to overcome things like graffiti in the rail corridors in Auckland, Wellington, and in other places.

We also, I think, need to put this hand in hand with other bylaws. As a council in the North Shore, we also brought in bylaws to control aerosol spray-cans and access to the actual graffiti sprays. We required that the DIY stores and other retailers put them in glass cabinets. It is amazing; if you take away the source of the graffiti materials—the actual spray-cans—and make it difficult for people to access them, it actually does also reduce graffiti. So I think it is important that around New Zealand we think a lot more smartly on this matter, because it is not just about removing the graffiti; it is also about apprehending the culprits and about taking away the source of the graffiti itself.

In closing, can I say this is another situation that the National Government needs to turn its mind to. It is another cost to local government. We have been hearing for weeks and weeks now of the National Government coming down on local authorities and saying that the rates are going up and up and up. This is another reminder to this National Government that local authorities throughout New Zealand do have to cover a huge amount of requirements on behalf of their communities. Graffiti is yet another cost to councils, yet another cost to ratepayers. If the councils did not undertake the graffiti removal, this country would not remain with its “100% Pure New Zealand” clean, green image; therefore, this is another cost to the local councils. I certainly hope, in commending this bill to the House, that the National Government will give cognisance to the fact that, once again, local government is stepping up to the mark and doing its bit. Thank you.

I rise to support the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill at its first reading. It is interesting that I am following Andrew Williams, who, of course, is familiar with the North Shore and familiar with the kinds of blots on the landscape that are not only to do with graffiti but also to do with the principle and the psychology, really, behind graffiti. Psychologists liken it to dogs marking their territory when they go up against a tree or some other such object—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker

Yes, Trevor.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member should just sit when a point of order has been called.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: That sort of instruction could be used more broadly in this circumstance, I think. This is a bill that has been debated in, I think, a relatively pleasant manner. The member is heading into what is a clear personal attack and should be stopped.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think the point of order perhaps prevented something that may or may not have happened, and I can only best guess what that might be. I think it is a general warning: members should debate the bill.

In response to the interruption, I would like to finish what I was saying. The psychology behind the people who do graffiti and tagging is that they make a mark on something in the same way that dogs make a mark to mark their territory. If you do not clean it off within a very short period of time, then it is marked again by others, whether it is by a tagger or a dog lifting its leg. If the point is clear, I am happy to make it and move on.

The key thing with graffiti and zero tolerance is that it does need to be cleared up, because it is a blot on the landscape. I would agree with Trevor Mallard that there are many examples around the country. I too have been impressed with the mural at Wainuiōmata. It is indeed a treasure. When something good does emerge in an urban landscape, it is respected by all corners of society. It seems to me that that is a distinction and that is something that when the bill goes to select committee will need to be examined: the definition of what is graffiti and what is a public place. These things do need careful definition, and the select committee is the appropriate place to debate those, which is a good thing, I feel. I am on the Local Government and Environment Committee and I will have the opportunity to tease that out.

The thing about graffiti is that it has worked terrifically well—the zero tolerance and some of the other initiatives that have been raised. Katrina Shanks talked earlier about Adopt-a-Spot. I have been involved in a public memorial in Auckland at the AIDS memorial grove, which has been graffitied by strange and twisted people. The immediate clearing up of the graffiti and then the application of a graffiti guard, which makes the clearing off a very easy process, is a good thing. I approve of these notions and approve of the idea that you try to put in preventative measures or ones that are not going to be at a great cost to the public purse.

All of these things can be discussed, and I think that the overall thrust of this bill is a very good one. For anyone who has been to Lower Hutt recently, it is apparent that there are major issues there, and it has been an issue for a very long time. I would imagine that if this Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill does go through in the form that is being proposed or in some amended state as a result of the select committee process, then it will, in fact, be something that might be able to be located, relocated, and applied in other parts of the country, as well. So I commend it; I think it is an excellent idea, but there are a lot of aspects within it that do need further discussion.

I agree with what has been said about the negative impact of graffiti. I feel that it is something that has to be cleared away right away, and there needs to be a public unity around this, because these people who do it are not very much in the mainstream but more on the fringes of society. I am looking forward to it coming before the select committee that I am a part of and to debating it in more detail at that time.

I rise in support of the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill, and I want to commend Trevor Mallard and the Hutt City Council for bringing it forward. When we had discussions midway through last year about this piece of legislation, I also discussed the matter with the Upper Hutt City Council to see whether, in fact, a bill that had wider application for both Upper Hutt and Lower Hutt would be useful. The issues are actually slightly different.

In Upper Hutt the bigger problem we have is not so much about graffiti not being removed but about the nature of the graffiti. In Upper Hutt the problem we have at the moment is around etching of windows, where the taggers basically scratch whatever their mark is into the windows of shops. It is actually a heck of a lot more expensive than spray-paint or crayons or whatever other materials often get used. Shoe polish seems to be one of the things of the moment for taggers. But the scratching into the windows is a heck of a lot more expensive and it is not something that the council can remove; it is actually something that the landlord does need to remove. No matter what happens it is expensive, because there are certain products that can remove the scratching once without having to replace the glass panes, but that can only happen a certain number of times before the whole glass pane has to be removed. Shop front windows are not cheap, and we are talking about people who go from one end of the main street to the other, doing over a whole heap of windows, and it starts to get pretty blimmin expensive. So that is the bigger issue that we face at the moment.

But I think, when I have looked into this, the causal issue is the same no matter what the method of graffitiing is. Quite often it is around boredom amongst some of the younger people. They do not have other things to do, and that is something that I know the councils in both Upper Hutt and Lower Hutt are also working on. But there is also an element of dysfunction in the family lives of some of the young people who do this. I know this because we have a couple of graffiti artists in Upper Hutt who have been repeat artists—well, you know, taggers—who have repeatedly been picked up by the police, taken home, and within an hour or two of being taken home they are back out on the street again, doing exactly the same thing as they were doing before they got picked up. I am not sure that there is any legislation that this House could pass that is going to remedy that problem. The problem is a much wider one than simply the graffiti; the problem is the dysfunctional family that is allowing that to go on. These are not even kids in their late teens or anything; some of them are actually very young. Some of them are intermediate school age or even younger, and I think that is a real tragedy. That is a much wider problem that we need to address if we are going to get serious about this.

The bill that Trevor Mallard has brought forward, however, is a very useful one. There are a number of buildings over time that get effectively abandoned, and there can be commercial reasons why they get abandoned, as well. I have a building—it is not really a building, but a property—in my electorate where a large multinational company, and I will not name it, is signed into a long-term lease for it. The owner of the property does not live in New Zealand, but because the people who have signed into it are still paying the lease, the landlord does not actually care what happens to the property. So the property is regularly being done over by taggers with spray-paint or with whatever, and tracking down the landlord to get the landlord to remedy the problem can be difficult, because the landlord does not actually care. The landlord is still getting the rent. It is still getting the money in, so it is not interested in doing anything to this.

The council has actually been pretty—

💬 Michael Woodhouse: That’s a sweeping generalisation.

No, no, this is just one example. This is a specific example I am talking about. I am not talking about this in general, but it is an illustration of where this legislation will be useful. In this specific example, the landlord does not even live in New Zealand and does not care. The council gets on to it and says “We want you to remove the graffiti.”, and now and then it will happen, but not all of the time. This bill here will give the council the power—well, actually, it will not, because this applies only to Lower Hutt, but if it did in Upper Hutt, where the building that I am talking about is—to go in and remove it.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: We could shift the building.

Yeah, we could shift the building. You can have the building, I tell you; nobody wants it. But that, of course, raises a wider concern, which is that councils—under this legislation, the Hutt City Council—will need to bear the cost of that. I think that we do need to consider whether there should be some cost recovery mechanism for that, because I am not sure that local ratepayers should be having to pay for the landlords not doing their bit. Of course, that begs the wider question of what liability the people who do the damage in the first place should face, and that is also one of those issues that need to be addressed. It is a good piece of legislation. It is overdue. I think it will be very much welcomed by the people of the Hutt Valley, and I look forward to its passage through the House.

I am pleased to stand in support of the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill. I think it is timely that more graffiti legislation is debated in this House and I say congratulations to the Hutt City Council on bringing this to the House.

I also have to say that I was a little surprised to actually see this bill in the name of Trevor Mallard. We know that Trevor has an exceptionally busy schedule, being a professional cyclist, part-time MP, and part-time amateur ticket sales agent, so having the time to bring this bill to the House and write such a bill must have been quite onerous. So credit where credit is due. I congratulate Trevor Mallard on bringing this to the House, as well.

Graffiti for communities is quite a scourge. It is a problem that communities up and down the country have to deal with. The Hutt City Council, like many councils, has been having a difficult time, and bringing this bill to the House in the name of Trevor Mallard, after he wrote it during his busy schedule, will help the Hutt City Council, should it be passed by this Parliament, to deal with the graffiti issue.

I have actually had a little bit of experience with a local bill around graffiti. I am a former member of the Manukau City Council, and several years ago the council put together a bill on graffiti, the Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill, on which I participated in the discussions when I was a member of that council. Subsequent to that bill being passed by this Parliament, those who know the history of graffiti bills will be aware that the Labour Government in 2008 subsequently repealed the Manukau bill and put in place a new set of provisions around graffiti.

Annette King, I understand, was the justice Minister at the time and I was pleased, as a member of the council at the time, to see the Government of the time debating the legislation around graffiti changes and having in place some nationwide changes. Those who have seen that particular graffiti legislation, and I think this is a question that applies to Hutt City as well, will see that one of the main provisions that the Labour Government’s graffiti legislation put in place was to restrict the sale of spray-cans to those over 18. Graffiti, unfortunately, is committed by many young people around the country, and perhaps that is a particular problem for Hutt City as well.

Someone was telling me earlier that there is a member in this House who knows a little bit about selling items to young people and the problems that can come about through selling items to young people. Does anyone know of a member in the House who knows a little bit about selling items to young people? [Interruption] I can hear someone saying “Trevor Mallard”. Does Trevor Mallard know a little bit about selling items to young people, and the problems that can come out of that? The Government in 2008 did a good job of restricting the sale of spray-cans to those over the age of 18, and I hope that the members opposite know a bit more about the problems of selling items to people who are of a younger age, particularly under the age of 18.

An additional provision that the 2008 graffiti legislation put in place, and again I think this applies to the Hutt City situation, is that the sale of spray-cans in shops is now restricted. Restricting the sale of those spray-cans, keeping them in locked boxes, means that it is much more difficult for people to get access to spray-cans. I would have hoped that after that legislation was passed, councils like the Hutt City Council had reduced numbers of incidences of graffiti. I hope that was the case, because that was an important provision in the bill.

In researching a little bit for my speech that I wanted to give on this bill I did think to myself what the situation could be for Hutt City Council if sales of spray-cans were made online. Access in shops is now more difficult, so perhaps younger people are turning to online sales. The most prevalent place for sales to take place online is TradeMe. So I went along this afternoon to TradeMe and I had a little look online to see whether there were any sales of spray-cans by providers in the Hutt City Council area. My attention was particularly drawn to the TradeMe account of bubs242. You see, bubs242, I understand, is a TradeMe member based in Hutt City. I wondered whether bubs242 had been selling any spray-cans. It turns out that bubs242 has since deleted his account; it no longer exists. I wonder which account the Hon Trevor Mallard uses now. I support this bill and I hope it passes through its first reading.

I want to thank the vast majority of speakers in the House. Jami-Lee Ross made a fairly appalling speech towards the end, which showed a lack of preparation. I am used to making speeches with a lack of preparation, and I think I can do better. I think after a few years that member might do better as well. There was another member from the Canterbury area, one of the bottle blondes—but I cannot remember which one; was it Dean?—who also showed a lack of preparation.

💬 Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Hon Trevor Mallard took a point of order about 10 minutes ago complaining that the speech given by another member in the House was taking rather a personal turn, and now he is doing exactly what he complained about.

💬 Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: Firstly, members cannot refer to past points of order. I think the point of order, though, is valid. The debate has been in good humour, and the member referred to some cosmetic attachments in relation to members of the House, and it really did, I think, demean the member’s speech. Could he come back to the bill.

Of course, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am one of those members who would love to be in a position to be able to use the stuff.

I do want to thank most members of the House for their contributions. I am sure that this bill will get a good hearing at the select committee. I look forward to hearing from people with views on graffiti, from a variety of angles, and getting people in there, like the Law Society, to make sure that we have not got any legal hiccups in it. I think it is a contribution, and one that I hope, if it works, is something that the Government might think about picking up to work more widely.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Local Government and Environment Committee.