Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill

I move, That the Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill be now read a first time. At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be considered by the Local Government and Environment Committee.

It is with pleasure that I rise as the member for Manurewa to introduce this bill. The bill has been initiated and drafted by the Manukau City Council in response to what is acknowledged as a costly and an ongoing problem in the Manukau community. In the 2003 and 2004 surveys that measured the quality of life in New Zealand’s eight largest cities, Manukau City ranked the lowest in residents’ ratings of a sense of pride in the way their city looks and feels. One of the main reasons for the low sense of pride is related to the graffiti problem in Manukau. Statistics indicate that over 1,600 sites and over 3,000 graffiti marks need to be cleaned off each month by the Manukau City Council. Over the last 3 years the council has annually spent more than $800,000 on graffiti eradication and community education.

The council has considered or undertaken a range of initiatives to deal with graffiti problems. Those include: quick removal, in which any graffiti mark is removed within 24 hours of being reported; community education and empowerment schemes, such as a volunteers programme; best street awards; best school and garden awards; murals; educational puppet shows; youth programmes such as the Vector Manukau Rangers Club; and a plan to design out graffiti. That is a crime prevention environmental design strategy and action plan aimed at minimising, through environmental design, the opportunity for people to commit crimes, including graffiti and vandalism, by having a different look on things.

The council has also looked at overseas case studies, and in particular at the South Australia Graffiti Control Act 2001. From the city of Phoenix, the graffiti prevention and code enforcement policies have been closely examined. The council has also considered a by-law review. It has received legal advice that local authorities in New Zealand are not authorised to impose restrictions on acquiring substances used for graffiti by point-of-sale and age-limit restrictions, despite those provisions having proved to be successful in overseas cities.

The council has also advocated for legislative changes at the central government level. In 2003 Sir Barry Curtis, the Mayor of Manukau, submitted a graffiti remit to the Local Government New Zealand conference, advocating it for adoption by local government in New Zealand. First, it promotes zero tolerance towards unauthorised graffiti, second, it lobbies the Government for legislative changes to ban sales of paint spray-cans and broad-tipped markers to juveniles, and, third, it lobbies the Government to ensure the police have sufficient powers to apprehend offenders, and that penalties reflect the increasing seriousness with which the community views graffiti. The remit was accepted as a conference remit. However, no real, significant progress has thus far been made.

The council has also considered the problem throughout the Auckland region. A region-wide officers meeting group, sponsored by the city manager of Manukau City, was established in 2004 to study how councils in Auckland could work together to deal with the graffiti problem.

Despite the many resources committed and initiatives launched, the Manukau City Council reports that the problem has been escalating. In addition to conventional spray-can graffiti, the council is now trying to deal with newly invented types of graffiti such as ground marks and grass scratchings. That type of graffiti is more difficult and more costly to remove than conventional graffiti. Overseas experience suggests that enforcement is currently a weak link in the council’s anti-graffiti campaign. The council believes that without a legislative deterrent to offenders, Manukau City is fighting a losing battle.

The opportunity of introducing a local bill to help Manukau to combat the graffiti problem was raised and discussed in July 2004 with me, as a member of Parliament, with Sir Barry Curtis, the mayor, and with other elected members of the council. I have to say graffiti is a problem that has been going on for many years. I remember that when I became mayor of the adjoining Papakura City in 1983, it was one of the first things that Sir Barry and I discussed. The problem has been going on for a long while.

The purpose of the Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill is, first, to minimise the graffiti problem in Manukau City, second, to penalise graffiti offenders, and, third, to provide the council and the police with additional powers to deal with graffiti-associated problems. The bill goes beyond the existing statutory provisions relating to graffiti, by, first, regulating the display of spray-paint cans in retail premises and their sale to minors. Although that will be controversial, people in Manukau think it is common sense. Second, it creates offences of marking graffiti and carrying a graffiti implement in certain circumstances. Third, it gives the council the power to remove graffiti on private property if it is visible from a public place. That is very, very important, because many people cannot afford to continually remove graffiti from the side of their house or fence when it is visible to the public. The bill also creates infringement offences relating to the display and storage of spray-paint in retail premises, and the marking of graffiti, and it provides the power for the police to require information from, and to arrest, a person suspected of committing an offence.

The Manukau City Council believes this bill for graffiti control will provide the council with the authority that would not be achieved by a by-law. It will not only defer graffiti offenders but regulate the possession, sale, and display of the tools they use to deface properties. The council also contends that the bill, together with the council’s education and prevention programmes to eliminate graffiti, will help to establish a clean, safe image for Manukau City. The level of graffiti damage varies from city to city, and therefore although the need for legislative methods to help to curb the problem is seen by Manukau as important, that will vary throughout the country. In that regard, a local bill has been put forward as the most appropriate option to introduce legal methods to address the graffiti problem in Manakau.

On behalf of the council and the people of Manakau, I recommend the bill to members for further consideration.

Perhaps I should declare an interest in this bill, because I am one of the ratepayers of the Manukau City Council. I am very pleased to be able to support this bill, and to say to Mr Hawkins that I do not think it is so controversial; I think anybody with an ounce of common sense will support this bill. It is all about saying to people in local government: “Parliament gives you all these jobs to do, and we’re going to give you the tools to do it.” I think it is a fabulous bill. I am very happy to support it. The National Party is happy to support it. I cannot imagine why anybody in this place would not support it, because it is just so interesting—

💬 Nandor Tanczos: Flog graffiti artists!

Is Mr Tanczos saying we should flog them? That is a terrible thing, and I suggest that in the National Party we do not believe in beating children. No, no, we will not support the flogging of children.

I will not go over all the details that Mr Hawkins has already given us, because he has fully canvassed the bill and done a very good job.

💬 Hon David Carter: He could have been a bit more enthusiastic.

Yes, he could have been more enthusiastic. But the important fact is that this is kids, mostly, although not always, particularly in the Papakura area, which I am also part of although I am a ratepayer in Manukau, because the police pick up adults in their 20s defacing property with graffiti. Some are in their 20s and 30s—even grandparents, apparently. It beggars belief that anyone of that age, and therefore that responsibility, could do this to other people’s property. Day in, day out, businesses, home-owners, and those who rent those properties have to clean the stuff up.

Many of us—and Mr Hawkins as a local MP, Mr Robertson, who is the MP for Manukau East and who will have had exactly the same situation, Mr Williamson, who is the MP for Pakuranga, and those in that particular area will know—have often tried to work with people who sell marker pens, spray-paint cans, and everything else, to get them to put a limit on the age of those to whom they will sell these cans. The problem is that if they do not have the legal standing to do it, those people then put themselves in the gun, should they get some civil libertarian lawyer coming along saying: “I know best.”

That is what happened in Papakura, which is, of course, not part of Manukau City but has the same problems, when the local police were very, very diligent in getting people who had been caught vandalising property with graffiti to clean it up. The local police had them dressed up in little orange outfits required by Occupational Safety and Health, which said things like “Police diversion”. I thought it was a very good scheme. But some visiting Queen’s Counsel came through the town, saw this, and got upset. Of course, she does not have to live there, work there, or have anything to do with the ratepayers. She went to the Sunday Star-Times, from memory, and complained. So what happened? The police were told not to do that any more. So now they have them in orange outfits without “Police diversion”. I thought they looked so much better with “Police diversion” on them.

That is the sort of thing that local people have to do, and those of us who work and live in areas like that are sick of being told by central government: “You sort it out, but we’ll give you no tools to deal with it.” It is a very, very good initiative for Manukau City, and I am sure, should it pass successfully through Parliament—and I have a feeling it will—other councils will say that it is about time they had the same initiative, or that they would like some of the same powers, as well.

I am not quite sure whether I heard the Minister say that the Government will be supporting it.

💬 George Hawkins: Yes.

That is very good, and, of course, with our numbers I am sure it will be just fine. [Interruption] I say to Mr Tanczos, who is trying to interject, that sometimes it is sensible to have a grand coalition that is to the benefit of the people—the people, in other words, who pay our salaries and the salaries of everyone in this place. So we are very, very keen to support the bill. We are very keen to support this local initiative, and to give the powers to the people who actually have to live there. I am sick and tired of people in their ivory towers telling us in Manukau City what to do, how to do it, and where to do it, and that we should be really inclusive to the point of being inclusive towards graffiti artists. I tell them to come and walk a mile in our shoes and they will find their tolerance will become zero, because ours is. We have had enough.

Like the previous speaker, I want to declare a vested interest in the bill, being a resident and a ratepayer of Manukau City. So I would support any legislation that would ensure the ratepayers of Manukau City are not burdened by the costs associated with the problems that this bill intends to address. While I am speaking, I want to remind the Manukau City Council that although it feels great about discussing such issues with elected members of Parliament, it does have one or two list members resident in its city, and it would not go amiss to have them considered in such deliberations.

However, putting that matter aside, I stand on behalf of New Zealand First to say that we will support this bill going to the select committee. I must say that this bill, which I suspect will be passed, will make Manukau City the first one in New Zealand to have strict anti-graffiti laws. But it also poses the question that if it is good for Manukau City, then it should also be considered for other local bodies throughout the country. Perhaps during the process of this bill through the different processes that are available to the House, submissions may be received from other local bodies that wish to do something similar for their city.

The bill raises one or two issues that I think ought to be considered during the select committee stage. Although it mentions crayons and spray-paints only, several businesses in the local community of the part of Manukau City that I reside in recently had the windows to their shop fronts subjected to etching. Although reference to etching is made in passing in the bill, I think that it ought to be given more prominence.

It also raises another issue about how the agency that is charged with law enforcement decides intent. As we heard from the previous speaker, the people who are committing those acts against their local community are quite clearly not just confined to the youth of our city but are also adults and those people whom one would consider to be of a mature age. If one is apprehended in Manukau City going about one’s own daily business while carrying a crayon, a marker, or even a spray-can, how is intent to be measured? That is one of the issues that will need to be considered.

Of course, the bill recognises overseas evidence that suggests deterrent legislation is necessary to combat this problem. Enforcement is currently a weak link in the anti-graffiti campaign in Manukau. The bill is cognisant of the “broken windows” approach to crime introduced in New York City under the mayoralty of Mayor Giuliani in 1994, which was based on the theory that neighbourhoods that neglect minor signs of decay and disorder open the door to serious crime. That zero-tolerance approach to even low-level crime resulted in a dramatic drop in overall crime rates in New York, especially serious crime.

I say that, notwithstanding the results the local area command is having in terms of law enforcement, its task would be made much easier if the “broken windows” approach that I have alluded to is adopted in order to address this serious issue. Graffiti is seen as a huge, ongoing antisocial problem in Manukau, which has an adverse impact on the city’s image. The member in charge of this bill certainly alluded to that issue. He also alluded to the fact that it is costing the council hugely in terms of money and resources that it would prefer to direct towards positive community projects.

This bill seeks to address the escalating nature of the problems associated with graffiti. Therefore, on behalf of New Zealand First, I stand to indicate our support for this bill being referred to the select committee.

I rise to point out the numerous reasons why the Green Party will not support this bill going to a select committee. It does have a couple of provisions in it that are worth this House considering—and I will mention those as I talk my way through the bill—but the areas of the bill that are repugnant to basic principles of justice are so overwhelming that, on balance, we cannot support it.

Mr Paraone said that, if enacted, this bill would mean that Manukau would have the first strict anti-graffiti laws in the country. Well, actually, what it will mean is that Manukau will be the only place in this country where the basic right to silence guaranteed in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act will no longer apply for certain offences. It will be the only place in the country where that has been enacted. Members of this House, before they get too carried away about the fact that they do not like tagging on their garages and their walls, need to think about what the bill actually does, not just what they think it does.

Let us go through the bill. Clause 6 is “Cans of spray paint to be secured”. I found that clause quite interesting. Normally we require shops to lock away guns and things that are dangerous to other people—things that can kill people, and the like. Presumably, the only reason behind the idea of requiring by law that cans of paint be locked away is to stop them from being stolen. I cannot see any other basis. That is pretty weird. I find it quite strange that this House is requiring businesses to lock away products in a locked cupboard so that they do not get stolen.

💬 Ron Mark: Pharmaceuticals.

Pharmaceuticals are a different thing, because there is the possibility of overdose, death, and serious harm. This is about people not liking their fences being tagged. The other interesting thing in terms of locking cans away is that the legislation will not apply to all cans, because the council can agree in writing that some kinds of cans can be stored openly. The council, because it likes these cans but not those ones, can suddenly decide that those cans have to be locked away and these ones do not. Will that apply in respect of shops? Will the council be able to send a letter to certain shops to say that some do not need to lock their cans away but others do? This bill opens a very interesting door to all kinds of weird and arbitrary powers that will now become available to the Manukau City Council.

The bill introduces an age restriction. Both George Hawkins and Judith Collins talked about the fact that an age restriction cannot be enacted by a by-law, and I accept that. I think there are arguments for introducing an age-limit, but the point is that we do not need to enact this extraordinary legislation in order to put in an age limit. We can do that without bringing with it all these other breaches of basic rights that are guaranteed to us in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

Clause 9 states that an authorised person who is given a warrant by the council can enter premises and investigate whether the provisions are being complied with, and can take photographs or make films or other recordings. It does not in any way indicate what “investigate” might mean. Does it mean that people could go in and start searching through computer files, check customer databases, and do those kinds of things? Again, that is a pretty broad scope to give to people just because they have a letter from a council saying that they can investigate whether businesses are selling spray cans to 16-year-olds.

Clause 10(1), “Marking of graffiti”, states: “Every person commits an offence who without lawful authority marks graffiti.”, which the interpretation defines as “to deface property in any way”. The really interesting stuff comes in clause 11, “Carrying graffiti implement”: “(1) Every person commits an offence who—(a) carries a graffiti implement with the intention of using it to mark graffiti without lawful authority;”. Mr Paraone raised the very important question of how we decide whether someone has an intention to mark graffiti. That is already covered, because clause 11(1)(b) states that every person commits an offence who “carries a graffiti implement of a prescribed class without lawful excuse …”. So there does not even need to be an intention to mark graffiti; all a person needs to do is carry a spray can to commit an offence under this bill. Of course, we know that not everyone will be done for carrying a spray can. Only the young and the poor—probably young Māori poor—will be stung by this. We know that that is how these things get enforced on the street.

What is meant by a “prescribed class” of graffiti implement? Let us have a look at that. What does the bill say? Well, one would think the bill would be quite specific. One would think it would lay out quite clearly the kinds of prescribed implements that a person can be found guilty of simply possessing, never mind whether he or she has an intention to use them to mark graffiti. One would think it would be specific. But no, graffiti implements are: “capable of spraying paint or a similar substance:”. Clearly this is aimed at spray cans, but it can include spray guns and all kinds of things like that. As I said, people do not have to have an intention to mark graffiti with the implement; they just have to have it on their person. “Prescribed class” includes “graffiti implements designed or modified to produce a mark that—(i) is not readily removable by wiping or by use of water or detergent; and (iii) is more than 15 millimetres wide. So if a person has a marker pen with a tip that is more than 1½ centimetres wide:”, that person would be committing an offence under this Act. People do not have to have an intention to tag, to graffiti, or to do anything; they just have to have such implements in their pockets and under this Act they would be committing an offence. I find that absolutely extraordinary. I notice that members of the National Party have suddenly buried their heads under their desks very quickly now.

The other concern is paragraph (c) of clause 11(3): “graffiti implements capable of etching glass.” That means that if a person is wearing a diamond ring, he or she is committing an offence under this bill, because the ring is capable of etching glass. The person does not need to have an intention to mark graffiti; he or she just needs to be carrying something “capable of etching glass.” [Interruption] I invite the honourable member to read the bill before he starts scoffing. He should read the bill and see what it says. Those are exactly its words. But we know that if a rich lawyer with a diamond ring is walking down the road in Manukau, he or she is unlikely to have any police officer try to take it and charge him or her. The provision is clearly aimed at one section of our society and at one age demographic, and I think that is repugnant.

Part 4 details “Council powers in relation to graffiti”, and clause 12 provides that a council may remove or obliterate graffiti on private property. It is a very good part, and that is a very good provision. It makes absolute sense. Some people do not have the time, money, or inclination to clean up the graffiti on their property, but they are quite happy for the council to come and do it. If the council thinks it can afford it, and if the council is so inclined, we should let it do that—absolutely. We have no problem with that. There is an interesting little subclause, though—clause 12(5): “No civil liability attaches to the Council, an employee of the Council, or a person acting under the authority of the Council, for anything done by the Council, employee, or person under this section.” So if the council says it will clean up the graffiti on someone’s garage door, but accidentally drives a truck through the garage, demolishes it, and writes off the car, there is no civil liability attached. Well, that is a nice little out for Manukau City Council, is it not?

Part 5 talks about infringement notices. It allows for infringement notices to be given, and that is something we support. Currently, sanctions already apply in relation to graffiti under wilful damage, bill sticking, defacing, and such provisions in the Summary Proceedings Act, and in section 269 of the Crimes Act, under “Intentional damage”. But those are all criminal sanctions, so I think it is very good that the bill might introduce infringement notices instead. That is a good thing; it is a part the Greens support.

I am a little bit concerned that the serving of a notice will simply include posting it to the person’s last known place of residence or business, and that it is treated as having been served when it is posted. A lot of the people this bill is specifically designed to target are young people and highly mobile, and the last place the council knows of for where they live could have been three, four, or five addresses ago. So I am a little bit concerned that we will end up with people having increased costs because their cases will go to court as they never got their infringement notices in the first place.

The last thing I would like to touch on in the brief moment I have left is Part 6, which is the really serious part. If a police officer or authorised person—that is, a person authorised by the council—believes on reasonable grounds that a person is committing or has committed an offence under this Act, the authorised person can direct that person to give his or her name and address. Well, that is pretty standard. But that authorised person can also direct him or her to give, to the extent known, the name, address, and whereabouts of any other person connected in any way with the alleged offence. If he or she refuses to do so, he or she is committing an offence under this part. Well, that goes far beyond the normal rights of questioning that the police have. It is a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and a breach of the basic right to silence. It is interesting that the Local Government Act requires by-laws to be consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, but of course that does not apply to this Parliament—so is that why Manukau has brought legislation to this House?

The purpose of this bill is to provide for local control over the graffiti problem in Manukau. It is that word “control” that encapsulates the range of issues the Māori Party has with this bill. I will return to that later.

I want first to look at the problem of graffiti. I am aware of the concerns that have prompted the Manukau City Council to take up this matter in the House. Indeed, as a local member I am aware that there are concerns, shared by constituents across Tamaki Makaurau, that demand our attention. In the 2003 survey on the quality of life in New Zealand’s eight largest cities, Manukau featured as one of the five cities that perceived graffiti as being problematic. The big-city survey described graffiti as impacting on the way people feel about where they live, contributing to people feeling unsafe in their neighbourhood. Over half of the residents surveyed in Manukau and Auckland—62 percent and 52 percent respectively—stated that graffiti was a big problem in their neighbourhood.

When I hear the honourable Minister talk of zero tolerance for graffiti writers, I wonder about the direction in which our society is going. I would have thought that zero tolerance would be reserved for serious crime. We need fresh ideas, creative courage, and passion for our people. It should not be for us in Wellington to determine a set of solutions that we consider would suit the streets of Manukau. We must turn to the people of Manukau for that leadership—I emphasise: the people of Manukau, not just the Manukau City Council. The Maori Party believes that people have the solutions. Solutions do not reside in the halls of bureaucracy, whether that bureaucracy is in the debating chamber of Parliament or in the council chamber of Manukau City. Our responsibility as central or local agents of government should be to look for ways to support local solutions to locally determined problems.

The solutions proposed in this bill consist of fines and wide-ranging powers for the council and police to get tough—and to get even. Such solutions are Draconian and overly punitive, introducing a level of power and control coming up that responds to the issue of graffiti in a way that can only have serious consequences for the individuals involved. Are these the solutions that the people of Manukau want? When did they speak up to call for increased power for the police and council authorities? It sounds like a solution I heard that was promulgated to solve the problem of youth gangs: round them up and lock them up. I have been to community meetings in Māngere, Ōtara, Manukau, Manurewa, and Papatoetoe, and I have seen concerned citizens being really creative in dealing with the gang problem, in a healing manner and with long-term solutions in mind.

💬 Pita Paraone: Did it work?

It is working. I have spoken in this House before about the appalling increase in incarceration rates in this country. Let me remind members that there has been a 51 percent increase in less than 9 years, from 4,988 people in jail in April 1997 to a staggering 7,545 inmates a couple of weeks ago. When we think about who our youth population is, particularly in Manukau, it will not take much imagination for us to work out who will be first to be convicted. It is rangatahi, the youth. Why do the city mothers and fathers of Manukau want to incarcerate their young? Who will be the next to annoy them? Why is it the case that the only answers being created by central and local government seem to be the ones that lead down a justice trajectory?

The Māori Party believes that people must determine their own solutions. That applies as much to the issue of graffiti as it does to other issues, like that of youth street gangs fighting. We should not fear letting go of central control and providing space for citizens to shape our thinking in that regard. I asked around about different ideas from people outside of Manukau—about what they had considered in facing this problem of graffiti. The responses were overwhelming in their commitment to local innovation. In my colleague Hone Harawira’s town of Kaitāia, I heard about Project Wipeout, which involves the Community Probation Service, the police, and local businesses. The safer community council supplies brushes and equipment, Kaitāia businesses supply paint to match their buildings, and a backpack is provided to the offender for the prompt removal of graffiti.

I move south now to Te Uruora Flavell’s electorate of Waiariki and mention that the Tauranga City Council has established an 0800 SPEAK UP line for giving confidential information to police, whilst also supporting the immediate removal of graffiti in all public places and visible private property through contracting removal services. Across the straits to Te Wai Pounamu, the Kahurangi Employment Trust initiative helps keep Nelson graffiti-free and litter-free through a community project that encourages so-called alienated youth to receive mentoring and to learn working skills. These are all ways to tackle the issue of graffiti in a way that serves the community, introduces an element of rehabilitation to the offender, and avoids adding another statistic to our rates of arrest and conviction.

This House must not set in place legislation that stifles creativity. Creativity is particularly important when considering the art of graffiti. The word “graffiti” simply means words or drawings scratched or scribbled on a wall. The word comes from the Greek term “graphein”, meaning “to write”, and the word “graffiti” is the plural of the Italian word “graffito”. Art in the form of graffiti originated in the late 1960s, but graffiti in terms of public and unsolicited markings has been around forever. For those of us in this House who remember the 1960s, we may remember the words of musicians Simon and Garfunkel, in their classic hit “The Sound of Silence”, which are: “The words of the prophets were written on the subway walls and the tenement halls”. Back in Aotearoa the words of the prophets were given status in June 1986, when a Wellington building from the 1900s was covered in graffiti by up to 2000 people. What criminal sanctioned this appalling act of vandalism? It was none other that the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, which encouraged the graffiti to save the Missions to Seamen building. The graffiti included such messages as: “Don’t leave us with no yesterday” and “Save me”. Graffiti was called upon as a desperate public action to save the building. The “Sign It to Save It” campaign was ultimately successful as the Missions to Seamen building became a landmark of public significance. Earlier this year the graffiti exhibition Love Letters was an ambitious art exhibition that was part of AK05, the Auckland festival. The heart of the city exhibition gave prominence to Bucklands Building in Takutai Square, and was also seen as art, not crime.

So what is different about Manukau? The act of graffiti can be seen as a defiant act of vandalism, or it can be seen as a statement of identity, a social commentary, or an art form. The graffiti art that emerged in New York in the 1970s became associated with the explosion of hip-hop culture in the 1980s. Inevitably, here in Aotearoa the influence of Māori and Pasifika taggers gave it a local edge. The Disrupt Gallery in Karangahape Road could be one site visit that I would recommend every member of Parliament having a look at. The gallery displays the talents of the graffiti art collective Disruptiv, and the works in that gallery are a celebration of identity. Indeed, even to the novice the distinctive art of an individually styled name is the focal point in the majority of graffiti paintings.

We in this House need to be brave with our decisions and not reduce every problem to a quick fix, fine, or arrest. The problem of graffiti is one of arrested creativity, and it is with creativity that we should respond. All that increasing the capacity of the police and the city council officials to surveil, arrest, and fine offenders will do is to add to our justice hall of shame. We could instead look to create a hall of fame through encouraging communities and individuals to consider alternatives for the creativity and talent of the taggers to be put to constructive means. It may well mean that we reduce and minimise the risk for graffiti to be an act of vandalism and in the process create opportunities for the growth of art and culture, celebrate identities, and build community spirit, and, in doing so, create solutions that we can all sign up to. Nō reira, tēnā koutou.

I rise on behalf of United Future to speak to the Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill. I say at the outset that we will be supporting the first reading of this bill in response to the request of the city council involved, which obviously feels it has a problem it wants to deal with.

The very first thing that occurred to me when I read this bill was the Broken Windows project in New York. It was interesting to grab some literature on that project, and some of the research that has come even from within New Zealand shores in that regard, and read the thinking behind it. The concern that many authors who write on this problem have is that if we decriminalise disreputable behaviour that “harms no one”, and thus remove the ultimate sanction the police can employ to maintain neighbourhood order, we are making a mistake. For instance, arresting a drunk or a vagrant who has not harmed anybody in an identifiable way can seem unjust, but failing to do anything about a score of drunks, or 100 vagrants, can actually destroy an entire community. Small things do matter. However, I do share some concerns that have been expressed by the Green member about how we should respond to this. Although we have some concerns with the bill as proposed, our reason for supporting it is the opportunity to iron out its wrinkles in the select committee process. We believe that that opportunity should be afforded Manukau City, because it is obviously facing some huge issues.

Although in certain contexts graffiti is an art form that can, and should, be celebrated, I believe that graffiti painted on my fence without my permission is an act of vandalism, and it should be seen as such. We should not try to confuse the two. My own personal feeling about graffiti is that when I see it, particularly in urban areas, the message conveyed to me is: “Nobody cares about this place”. When people are led to believe that the environment they live in and connect with is not worth caring about, then—as is well documented—there is a deterioration in society’s behaviour in general. A thesis, Broken Windows, written back in 1986, linked behavioural decline in communities to what happens in a neighbourhood when a building has a broken window that is not repaired. The simple conclusion of that simple observation was that one broken window left broken resulted in a lot of broken windows in the same building and in the same neighbourhood. People in that neighbourhood began to feel unsafe in their own streets and moved out, the criminal element moved in, and an unsafe environment was created. The police, in New York in particular, started to take a harder line on what we would refer to as petty crime—like tagging, like jumping over the barrier to get into the subway without paying, like begging—and decided to make some real inroads into the area of petty crimes. As a consequence, they saw a decline in the more concerning areas of crime.

We are all aware of the recent publicity in Manukau about gangs, and about some of the concerns that community has. So, with the reservations that have been well clarified by other parties, I think that this bill is worthy of consideration. Untied Future is very happy to support its first reading. We look forward to seeing the submissions on it. We would like to encourage the select committee, as it considers the bill, to look also at some of the projects dealing with the problem of graffiti. For instance, Hamilton’s safer communities project has done some really interesting things regarding graffiti. Also, Dr Pita Sharples mentioned some other initiatives up and down the country that he is aware of, where a different and less punitive approach has been tried and has had some success.

It may be that there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to this problem, and the suggestion that the Manukau City Council has put forward may be the solution for that community, but I am not prepared to make a judgment on that right now. I think we need to be aware that when we enshrine in law initiatives of this kind a precedent is set, and we could expect other councils to take action if this bill passes in its current form. We need to make sure that the consequences and the flow-on effect from that is what we are looking for. But United Future is happy to support the first reading and to see the work progressed.

I start by thanking members for their contributions. I do not agree with all of them, but I think the vast majority of them believe that the Manukau City Council should have its day before the select committee, and I think that is very important. I know that there are concerns in relation to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and the select committee is the place to thrash that out. I think that a select committee examining things carefully—many heads together—will ensure that this legislation eventually becomes law.

Many people in Manukau City have for a long while tried to overcome the problem of graffiti. They have been doing so for many years. I do not see graffiti sprayed on someone’s garage or wall as creative. I see it as a mess, and I am a former art teacher who encouraged people to be creative. I see graffiti as being a wee bit like a bird crapping in its own nest. It spoils the community. The people of Manukau want a better community—one that is respected by all the people who live in it. We have good people like the Rev. Mark Beale out on Saturdays with a group of people cleaning up graffiti, as are Bill Marshall and plenty of other people.

💬 Hon David Carter: Name one.

I have often cleaned up graffiti. I do not mind going down and cleaning something off a building for people if it means cleaning up graffiti. If it means slapping on a paint brush, good on them.

I think the time has come when people are starting to take back their community, and they are bringing back some pride. It is about time that those who have concerns bring them to the select committee, have them examined, and make this bill even better.

I move, That the Local Government and Environment Committee consider the Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Although the member has mentioned which committee, is there any necessity to have a report-back date on this?

I think the committee has only 6 months before it has to be reported back.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): Thank you very much.

Bill referred to the Local Government and Environment Committee.