Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill

I move, That the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill be now read a third time. Very early in this debate I am feeling a little bit of confusion, because the run sheet I have says that the Minister speaks here. I just wanted to know whether or not there has been an event, an invitation from Mr Key, or an election, or what the story is, but I will assume, in fact, that the member in charge of the bill should appropriately speak now.

This is a bill that is a relatively simple little bill, one from the Hutt City Council, one that is the brainchild of Ray Wallace, the Mayor of Hutt City. He is a very good mayor of the independent city.

💬 Grant Robertson: That’s right—republic.

No, I would not say we were a republic, but it is an area that is proud of its independence. Ray Wallace, when running for mayor, made graffiti an important issue as part of his campaign, and as part of that exercise we went through some of the things that could be done to reduce graffiti in Hutt City. It is fair to say there has been a considerable amount of progress. I think Dave O’Sullivan’s team—anyone who has any knowledge of rugby league history in New Zealand will know former Detective Sergeant O’Sullivan, who is a pretty mean second rower. I think he was part of the Wainuiōmata champions team in the early 1990s. He has taken charge of the contracting for removing graffiti, and he and his team work very, very well. They work quickly. The Hutt City works on the basis that when this rubbish is up, it is better to get it down as soon as possible. It is taken down from places that can be viewed from public places, especially from roads, where it is on council land. There is an arrangement with Telecom, the New Zealand Railways Corporation, the power companies, and a number of others to get rid of the stuff immediately, and, as a result of that, the place looks a lot better.

They also do private property. The council works on the basis that if it has an expert team and it is going around the city every day anyway, it is better to use that team and its expertise with paint and matching to paint private property with the consent of the property owners. The vast majority of property owners are rapt. Some people tell me that they did not even know that they had graffiti on the fence, and they get a knock on the door from the contractors from the council offering to paint it out. I think that it is a damn good service, and it is something that we are proud of in the Hutt.

But, unfortunately, there are a few people who come, really, into two categories. First, there are the owners of abandoned buildings. These are people who are often offshore, have not got tenants in the buildings, or, very occasionally, have dubious people who are in those buildings. It is hard to get a response as to whether or not the graffiti should be painted out; to date it is always done with consent.

The effect of this bill is to give the council rights so that after an appropriate period of notice in writing has been issued—about 10 working days’ notice; it is a couple of weeks, effectively, although these people do work more than 5 days a week—if there has not been a negative response from the landowner, it means that the council or its contractors will be able to go on to the property and get rid of the graffiti. That seems like a logical thing to do.

There is a doubt about the period. I think that these days there is email and other electronic contacts, and that is the way that most contact occurs. Out in the Hutt now, most people pay their rates—

💬 Grant Robertson: You’ve got email in the Hutt?

We have got lots of wonderful males in the Hutt, including email, Mr Robertson. There is a question with an email delivery method of whether in fact that might be better and the period might be shorter, but the view was that because this law is new, and steps into an area that previously councils around New Zealand have not, it was better to be a bit conservative in bringing it in as to notice periods. But I do want to make the point that there is a point of balance, because the effect of that is that you do leave graffiti up for longer than would otherwise be the case, which slightly defeats the purpose.

There is quite a strong view in the Hutt that the presence of graffiti, or tagging, signals a lack of social cohesion. It does sometimes give a perception, generally an unfair perception, of danger, and there is no doubt that it has an effect on property values for the properties that are around the abandoned properties. Therefore, our view is that it has a detrimental effect on our city, on the image, and on the well-being—the feeling of well-being—of people. That is why we want to get rid of it.

The Summary Offences Act does provide legal grounds to deter offenders and to do some graffiti control. However, often the people who do this are, frankly, sneaky little bastards who—sorry? Well, they quite often are, Mr Speaker. They are people who sneak in, do the graffiti, and sneak away, and too often they are not caught in a way that they can be prosecuted. What is also not available under the Act is the ability, as I have indicated, to go on to private property or other property that is visible from a public place and clean it off without consent.

The package of measures—I want to say that some of them are negative. The painting out, the decision to prosecute people when caught defacing public property—those are negative. But there is a lot of positive stuff that goes on with youth in the Hutt. There is an attempt to divert. People like Councillor Ken Laban are doing a wonderful job in the sports area, because there is a view that the kid in sport is not in court. That sort of activity is very positive. Although the form of art is not one that I naturally warm to, it is often the case that many of these young people are, in fact, talented artists. If they can be channelled towards murals and other things, then very positive things can happen.

I think anyone who has visited what we call the old village, what people call Homedale, in Wainuiōmata, the village on the way down to the Rimutaka Forest Park—it is a beautiful park; people should visit it—going through that village, will know there is a wonderful mural of Tana Umaga and Piri Weepu. I think that has been up now for maybe 5, 6, or 7 years. I tell you what, that does not get vandalised. No one—no one—touches that mural, because there is community ownership. In fact, some of the people who painted it, and who might properly have been described as the little bastards of the time, have now grown up and they are quite big. I think any suggestion that that mural would be attacked—in fact, it would not happen.

I want to congratulate the Mayor of Hutt City, Ray Wallace, on his war on graffiti. I want to thank the Local Government and Environment Committee for the very good work that it did on the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill. I think the changes it made were an improvement to the bill. I want to thank the chair of the select committee for the way that she chaired it—in a way that I am sure a number of her colleagues could have lessons from to improve their abilities. I commend the bill to the House.

I am absolutely delighted to support this Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill at its third reading. I was interested that Trevor Mallard said that it is a simple bill, and he is absolutely right. It is simple, it is good, it is sensible, and it is straightforward. I think it is a credit to the Hutt City Council for bringing it to Parliament. We did not have to do much work on it at all, just a few slight amendments and a few tweaks.

The Local Government and Environment Committee worked well on the bill. It was actually interesting because a lot of these issues of graffiti are things that we come across in our own cities. Really, what this bill is all about, as Trevor Mallard has explained, is giving the Hutt City Council the ability to enter private land to remove graffiti from buildings that are in the public view—not around the back, but in the public view—where it does have a bad influence on the community.

I am also interested in picking up on the discussions about how people feel about graffiti in their community. The first thought about that—and I have had graffiti on my house, because I live in the centre of Christchurch; the house is now knocked down, but before it was knocked down—is that it absolutely impinges on you. You wonder why these people are painting nasty things all over your wall.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: It’s invasive.

It is an invasion of your privacy. It is an invasion of something that you care about, something that you have worked hard to look after, and something that you have spent good money on too.

Graffiti is a major problem in the urban areas, and I have to say that the Hutt Valley has been particularly hard hit with this. It is that damage to property that upsets people. It gives a symbol of neglect and it is something that the community really does want to get rid of. The Hutt City Council does have good processes to deal with the problem. It has actually invested significant amounts of money to remove graffiti. It has a rapid removal process, and I believe that it has very good contractors who are very experienced in this area, but it is not cheap. The council spends over $300,000 doing that work. We support it because it is doing it for the good of the community.

The problem that we are trying to address with this bill is the fact that some landlords—not all, but some landlords, particularly absentee landlords—do not respond to the council when it requests the access to clean up their properties, and so the council is stuck. It does not know how to deal with that. This bill will solve that problem.

We did get seven submissions on the bill, and the majority supported the bill, but there were a few issues raised. One of the issues that we dealt with, and we were really quite careful about, was how we can clarify the difference between graffiti and art. This is quite an interesting case, because how do you decide? Actually, in the end we chose a definition that was consistent with section 11A of the Summary Offences Act 1981. What this does is it identifies graffiti as something that damages and defaces. It actually lists numerous methods you could use to do that, but the crucial issue is that it was done without the lawful authority or the consent of the occupier and owner, because sometimes it is actually quite hard to tell the difference. There have been some delightful stories of magnificent graffiti art that has been in galleries around the world, and suddenly the cleaners have come in and cleaned it away. I think we have seen that people even in our own cities, young people who have been doing tagging and who have been involved in this sort of process, are actually quite creative and have some good ideas about art. We have been able to use them and get them out there painting over things.

The funny thing is that if a graffiti artist actually puts a lot of effort into designing a painting to go over an area that has been tagged, the chances are it will not be tagged again, because if they have got the mana that they are actually creating such a good work, nobody wants to destroy it. In actual fact, in our city, in Christchurch, we have got several places where they could never control the graffiti, so the neighbourhood got out and painted them beautifully. One of them is in the Shirley area, where the rugby—no, not rugby, but the other one. What is it called?

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson): League.

League. That is right, the league club. They had this great big huge wall that was always being tagged, so in the end they got out there. They got out the paint, the whole club painted it, and it has never looked better ever since.

There was one other tweak that we looked at in this bill. We were concerned that the council be transparent about the authority it had to access private property to remove graffiti, and we also wanted to make sure that those contractors were easily identified by the public. So we actually made some changes to the bill to make that happen.

The final concern was about the council and its liability, or its duty of care towards those landlords when it is removing graffiti. We did not want to exempt it from taking reasonable care. We did not think it was right, because contractors across the country have to take reasonable care otherwise they are liable, and we thought that even though this is being done for the public good, they still need to do the job properly. Actually, I think in this case it was probably unnecessary to put it into the bill, because the contractor that the council has at present is very skilled and does an excellent job. He matches the paint; he looks after the properties. But you never know what is going to happen in the long term, and I think it was really important to cover that.

In conclusion, this bill was well drafted, and the select committee, with the help of advisers, managed to get it into shape quickly and efficiently. It was an interesting bill to work on, and I think we gave a good outcome to the Hutt City Council. As we have heard, the Hutt City Council does have a really advanced graffiti eradication programme. That has had a positive effect on its community, and we hope that this bill will help support that work. Thank you.

It has been a pleasure to work on this local bill, the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill, brought to this House by my friend and colleague Trevor Mallard, who worked incredibly hard on this bill along with the Mayor of Lower Hutt City, Ray Wallace. In fact, Mayor Wallace campaigned for this bill before he was elected as mayor. He, at that time, declared war on graffiti and used it very much as part of his mayoral campaign, and he was determined to deliver on the promises that he made. I think it is true to say that this campaign struck a chord with many of the ratepayers out in the Hutt Valley.

You see, we are not talking about graffiti art. There is a difference between graffiti and graffiti art, and I have to say I learnt a little bit about this from my friend and former colleague Stevie Chadwick. You see, Stevie Chadwick’s nephew is Otis Frizzell, and Otis Frizzell is now a famous graffiti artist. In fact, I read some of the stuff that he has written about it and he says that graffiti art is basically the visual representation of hip hop. Well, I do not claim to understand either graffiti art or hip hop, but I do know it is a genre that is admired and sought after in the art world. So we are not talking about some of the amazing murals that have been painted around Wellington by young people in a graffiti art style. No, we are talking in this bill about unwanted, ugly scrawl painted by unthinking, uncaring, selfish louts who have no hesitation in defacing people’s property for no reason.

I have to say that I do not know whether it has occurred on your property, Mr Speaker, but it drives people mad. They become incredibly angry when they get up in the morning and they go out and find that their beautifully painted garage door has now got something that is incomprehensible scrawled all over it.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Sometimes it’s comprehensible.

Well, yes, sometimes it is comprehensible and cannot be repeated in this House. This happened, just as you heard from the previous speaker, Nicky Wagner, on my garage not very long ago. The annoying thing is that you have got to go out and buy a pot of paint if you have not had your garage painted for a while. You have got to take time to clean it up. It is an intrusion and it is an invasion of your personal space. It is unsightly, and I have to say I can find no redeeming features of this sort of graffiti. People actually hate it.

People particularly hate graffiti that remains in the same place and is not removed in a timely fashion. If you are driving around to the airport and you get opposite Kilbirnie Park and see a building on the corner there, have a look at the graffiti. It will be cleaned off, then graffiti will go up. If it is not removed within a few days, it has numerous tags all over it. It is unsightly and makes the people in that area of my electorate feel very unsafe. It does attract other graffiti, which is why councils, in particular, want to clean it up as fast as possible. They do not want it remaining. Of course, the graffiti writer wants as many people as possible to see it. The opposite is true for those who have had their property covered in graffiti and for councils.

So this bill is about empowering Hutt City Council to remove graffiti that is on private property where the owner cannot be found or identified in order to give consent, or, for that matter, to decline consent. It is not about forcing this on owners; actually, if an owner declines, it will not be removed. But it does give the council the opportunity using an established process to remove graffiti on private property. It is easy for a council to go along and remove graffiti from public property, and they do that incredibly well. We heard from people from Hutt City that they feel that they have faced a lot of tagging in their area. They believe that they are probably one of the most tagged places in New Zealand and so they want to see it removed as fast as possible. They want it removed off public property, but they also want it removed off private property. So what Trevor Mallard’s bill does is set out a process for doing this.

As you heard from the chair of our Local Government and Environment Committee, we had a very small number of submissions. In fact, there were only seven submissions on this bill, but they were very useful submissions, indeed. From them came some useful suggestions, including clarifying the purpose statement to make it clear that it is about the removal of graffiti that is on private property and it must be visible from a public place. So if there is graffiti that is at the back of a property, inside a porch, or whatever, and cannot be seen, that is not what they are talking about. They are talking about graffiti that is visible in a public place.

The second amendment was about requiring the council to state on its graffiti removal notice the source of the power it was relying upon. Of course, the source of the power they are relying on is this bill when it is passed. It also requires council workers when cleaning up graffiti to be easily identified as to who they are and what they are doing, because people do get very worried if they see people wandering on to their property with a paintbrush and a can of paint. They probably think that they are facing another round of graffiti, so council workers need to ensure that they are easily identified when they are cleaning up graffiti.

The minor amendments that the committee made have, I think, improved this bill and we end up with a bill that I now know that quite a number of councils around New Zealand are very interested in emulating. They would like to have this tool in their tool box for the cleaning up of graffiti on private property. I notice that the Mayor of Wellington only a week or so ago said how much she would like to have a similar bill. It was interesting that her officials then went on to say: “Oh, yes, but we’d have to estimate the cost.” Well, that is true, we must always know the cost of things, but if we do not clean up graffiti in a timely manner, there is a cost to that community. There is a cost to the feeling of security within that community, and there is a cost to the look of that community, and to the individual and their personal property in the devaluing of that property. So, yes, we need to be mindful of cost, but we also need to ensure that we can do whatever is possible to make the environment that people live in pleasant and safe. We all know that graffiti can ensure people feel unsafe within their communities.

I want to commend Trevor Mallard and the Hutt City Council, in particular Ray Wallace, for bringing this bill to the House. Is it not lovely that we are discussing this bill in an adult manner on Women’s Suffrage Day? Would it not be nice if many more of our debates could be so civilised rather than some of the ranting and raving that we heard from people like Simon Bridges and Judith Collins today? It is nice to be able to say that here is an agreed piece of legislation that we want to see go through the House. I certainly, along with the Labour Party, support this bill.

Good on Ray Wallace, the Mayor of Hutt City, for campaigning on this issue of graffiti in his community. Good on him for taking a stand, for putting his head above the parapet and actually standing for something, and then, when he became the Mayor of Hutt City, following through on it, with the help of the local member. So good on him, because at the start of a good community is good leadership. Clearly, the Hutt City Council has got good leadership at local government level.

A number of members in the House this afternoon have talked about the impact of graffiti on an individual. Of course, it is terrible to have your fence or your garage graffitied, particularly if it is one of those roller doors that have corrugated iron. What a pain to have to organise to get it fixed because somebody without a care in the world has come along and decorated it on your behalf. And actually that—

💬 Chris Hipkins: It’s the cedar ones that are a problem.

Sorry?

💬 Chris Hipkins: It’s the cedar ones that are a problem, because you can’t clean them.

The cedar ones, yes, yes. The member from over the other side is absolutely right: the cedar ones are much, much worse. I do not know whether the local authority—and the member might be able to help me out—would fix that. Is the Hutt City Council going to come along and strip down a cedar garage door, oil it, varnish it, and return it?

💬 Chris Hipkins: That’s a good point.

The member raises an interesting point, and I look forward to his contribution. It sounds like an expensive solution to me.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: No, they won’t damage it.

Well, I think we will just stick to the roller door example, because that, I suspect, is more typical of the type of surface that is being graffitied.

It is irritating to the extreme to an individual to have their private property defaced in this way. But I think also we need to be mindful of the impact on the wider community. It is absolutely true to say that a public place that has been graffitied and left sends the message that it is not a safe place for the community, that it is not a place that is cared for by the community. Indeed, it sends the message that the community does not particularly care about its public places. So I come back and again congratulate Mayor Wallace and his council on, obviously, supporting the passage of this Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill to deal to these issues.

I suspect I have said this to the House but I am going to say it again. I recall when the Local Government and Environment Committee visited Counties Manukau. We had a look at a little corner village, which comprised a number of shops and a number of flats. It was a meeting-place for the community. with residential areas all around it. That area was terrible. Apart from the graffiti there was long grass, there was rubbish, and it was clearly untidy and unkempt. The graffiti was terrible. A lot of it was indecipherable and some of it was obscene. Clearly, it was not a good signal to any of the local community. As part of the select committee visit, we heard about how the local police and the community, including the council, were getting together and dealing to that graffiti and dealing to that little corner community. Now it not only is perceived to be a safer place but is, in fact, a safer place for people of all ages to go and do their shopping, or go and meet, or do whatever they do—go to the local park. So as well as the individual impact of graffiti there is that wider message to the community.

The Local Government and Environment Committee worked in a very collegial way on this bill. It made a couple of minor amendments, which have been rehearsed already in the House today. With those words I want to congratulate once again Ray Wallace. Good local leadership is really a significant thing for a community. In doing that, I commend the bill to the House.

It is a great pleasure to rise and speak on the third reading of the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill. I was not the Green Party member who was lucky enough to follow this bill through the select committee process. That was my colleague Holly Walker, who previously congratulated the Hutt City Council on its efforts to swiftly deal with vandalism but also—and this is important—to channel the creativity of young people into street art and positive graffiti art projects.

I think that a major concern of the Green Party, when we first looked at this bill, was the potential for the bill to dissuade more positive, artistic graffiti, of which there is plenty. It can certainly enhance the character of towns and cities to have artistic graffiti—street art—like in the many laneways of Melbourne and the work of Banksy in London and around the world. So it is really, really critical that we do not lump all forms of graffiti into the same basket and say that it is necessarily a bad thing. I think it was a significant contribution that my colleague Holly Walker made on the Local Government and Environment Committee to ensure that there was a satisfactory definition of “graffiti” in this bill. It makes clear that art with the consent of the property owner is not graffiti for the purposes of this bill. The select committee also removed the clause that would have exempted the council and its contractors from civil liability, if they caused damage while removing the graffiti. There were a number of positive amendments made to the bill during the select committee process and as it went through the House. Those changes allowed us to fully support this bill today.

As previous speakers have noted, tagging can be quite a negative element within society, and it can lead to something that is known as the broken windows effect. We have noted that in urban areas where broken windows are not repaired in sufficient time, or there are ugly scrawls on pieces of property—and clearly they are not street art—it contributes to a negative feeling in the area. It tends to undermine a sense of community cohesion, and can in fact lead to spiralling social problems, whether they be further vandalism or other sorts of crime and violence.

Basically, we want our towns and cities to be places where everybody feels welcome. Obviously, tagging is not a form of street art, it is not something that makes people feel welcome. If it cannot be cleaned up quickly, then it can lead to a sense that this place is not looked after and it is not a place where people are welcome. That can lead to further antisocial behaviour.

As I understand it, tagging is a particular problem in the Hutt, and the area has some of the highest rates within the country. Tagging tends to proliferate swiftly if it is not removed. But the Hutt City Council has been very proactive in removing tagging. It has a dedicated team and a programme, which we have heard has been working very well. We congratulate the council on this.

Now that the council will have the legal right that this bill creates, it will be able to take its capacity and willingness to remove unwelcome graffiti or tagging to private property as well. This will be a very positive development for the community. The intent is not that the council would enter private property and remove graffiti if the owner wants the graffiti, as I previously mentioned. That was a very positive amendment that was made to the bill. Also, owners can respond within 10 working days, which may not seem particularly important, but it is an amendment from just 10 days. It allows greater time for owners to take this option, to say: “Thanks, but no thanks.” I think it is important that the council respect the property owner’s right to have that response.

I have heard some of the speakers here today describe taggers as being quite selfish—people who go out and vandalise private property. That may be one way to characterise them, but I think that it is worth thinking a little bit about why it is that some young people, or some people generally, do not feel like they are part of the community, and whether there are better ways to deal with the sources of the problem, rather than the symptom. Ultimately, tagging is just a symptom of a group of people who do not feel like they are part of society, do not feel that they have any particular reason to respect the rights of others. Within their own peer group and social group it is considered a sign of daring or bravery to go out and flout the law and to put their tag on a building or a piece of private property.

I think that there is incredible scope for community building projects—which the Green Party would support—that would enable young people, people who feel disenfranchised and feel like they are not part of society, to have activities that do not result in this destructive vandalism of private property, and also cause the ongoing ensuing social impacts that I mentioned before. I think there is great potential there, and I think it would be sad if we wrote off people who are currently tagging as people who could not become constructive members of society and channel their passion, their bravery, and their willingness to flout the law into something more successful. [Interruption] I was not suggesting that the Hon Trevor Mallard said that, but I did hear other people say that today in the House. Other members characterised the people who are currently tagging as louts. I thought that was just a bit unfortunate.

I think it is really important that we consider that the society we have now does not give equal opportunity to everyone to participate, and I think it is worth us reflecting on the fact that if we understand better the causes of why people behave in antisocial ways, we might be able to deal with that behaviour in a more constructive way that does not result in continually having to paint over tags. It is not really a very sustainable response if we constantly have to go back and paint over tags, which are going to continue happening as long as people feel like that is the only way they can go out and assert their mana.

When Parliament last considered graffiti removal legislation—and that was the Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill—the Green Party opposed it because it contained all manner of Draconian provisions, including restricting young people from purchasing spray cans. We were in favour of provisions like the ones in this bill that allow removal from private property, provided that the civil liability clause was changed. So although we are very happy to support this bill, I do not think it can be assumed that we would support similar legislation for other councils around the country. I think it is really important that we take them on a case by case basis and make sure that the provisions that are made for councils to deal with unwelcome tagging on private property are proportionate to the particular problems they are facing in each community.

In summary, I am very happy to commend this bill to the House. I congratulate the member on bringing it before us. We congratulate the Hutt City Council on its proactive approach to ensure that negative tagging is not causing continuing spirals of antisocial behaviour in the Hutt, and also on having proactive programmes in place to try to channel the art and the creativity of young people in the streets. The Hutt may be a long way from the laneways of Melbourne, but there is always the potential to channel that creative energy into some pretty outstanding street art, even in the Hutt. Thank you.

Malo e lelei, Mr Speaker. Thank you very much. On a day when we celebrate women getting the vote here in New Zealand, and when we have had many tributes to women who have contributed to New Zealand, I would like to begin by celebrating, or paying tribute to, two men, the first one being—[Interruption] Not you, Trevor. You will come second; you are not first. The first one is the Hutt City Mayor, Ray Wallace, who obviously has been in touch with his community and spoken to his ratepayers and business owners and has recognised the enormous concern, anger, and frustration that his constituents have with the problem of graffiti. As another member pointed out earlier in this debate, he has gone out and campaigned on that issue during the local body elections. He has won the mayoralty and turned his campaign promise and words into action, partnered with the second individual I would like to pay tribute to, the Hon Trevor Mallard, the MP for Hutt South, who has brought this bill, the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill, to the House. That is enough. I will continue now.

I am absolutely amazed about where some of these taggers can do their tagging. If anyone has driven south on State Highway 1 in Wellington and seen the rail bridge across Ngauranga Gorge, some of these people—the louts, or “the sneaky little bastards” as Trevor Mallard has termed them—some of these youngsters, have actually gone on to that bridge and tagged it. We really have to wonder about the common sense of going up on to some of those public places and tagging. If it were a council staff person who had to go and clean that up, or maybe KiwiRail, you would have to do a pretty serious health and safety assessment before you went up there. Some of our youngsters who are out there doing some of this stuff are putting themselves at serious risk of harm when they are doing this tagging on public and private property.

This is a bill that, as I said in my second reading speech, should after time, if it works, be extended to other jurisdictions. I know that certainly in my electorate at the moment the Mayor of Porirua, Nick Leggett, is hoping that this does work on the ground and that we can crack down on the prevalence of graffiti. In my case, the Porirua City Council is doing quite a good, proactive job of making sure that when graffiti does go up, whether it be on public land or whether it be on private land, it is doing a pretty good job of making sure that it liaises with the property owners or the homeowners to make sure that it comes down pretty quick smart.

As Trevor Mallard said, there is a sense that there is a serious lack of cohesion within a community, and a perception of things not being as safe as they should be, when there is a lot of graffiti in a public area, and certainly around our shops. There is certainly one property in the Porirua area where it has been an issue. The owner of the building has not been proactive in making sure that the considerable graffiti that has been on that building has been taken down quick smart. The community has sent a message pretty loud and clear that it is not happy with the visuals—or the optics, I should say—of that extensive graffiti in their neighbourhood because it is bringing down their sense of community. They do not feel good about that graffiti being there. And, as has been mentioned by a number of speakers, there is the issue of house prices that they certainly want to take into account. If one were to be selling a house and across the road there was a building with extensive tagging that had not come down in some time, then you would be pretty frustrated about the visual pollution that was across the road.

So what this bill does is allow the council to apply to a private property owner where there is graffiti that is visible from a public place and that property owner has 10 days to get back to it to ensure that it has the ability to go on to that private property, which it does not have at the moment, and get rid of that graffiti. I think that is a very pragmatic approach, and that is why I think there will be other councils around the country that will be watching these measures very closely and congratulating the Hutt City Council and Trevor Mallard on taking this action. They will see this and hope that it works in Hutt City. I am sure that Trevor Mallard, Ray Wallace—and Chris Hipkins, who is in the Hutt as well—

💬 Hon Parekura Horomia: And me.

Of course—and Parekura Horomia. They hope that this measure works—

💬 Hon Member: And Rino Tirikatene.

—and Rino Tirikatene, and I think most MPs—

💬 Hon Member: Charles Chauvel.

—and Charles Chauvel. I think most councils around the country will be looking at this experience and hoping that it works for them and that it can be extended out to their situation, as well.

I think I speak on behalf of most members of Parliament when I say that we are all probably victims of graffiti, whether it be on our electorate offices or every 3 years when we put up our hoardings and the carnival of the campaign begins. I think it would be very rare that there was any member of this House or any candidate at any election who has not been a victim of graffiti. I had one case where I put a hoarding on my house and 45 minutes later, less than an hour later, one of these—and I will not refer to them how Trevor Mallard referred to them—youngsters, I am assuming, was there—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Sneaky little bastards.

—I will not use that term—and had obviously seen that I had put up this hoarding at the front of my house, and within the hour had shown his artistic abilities on one of my hoardings. I managed to rub it out, using nail polish remover, but the very next day he was back again—

💬 Hon Chris Tremain: Out of your back pocket.

Do not ask me where I got the nail polish remover from. The very next day the very same person had been back obviously, because I recognised the tag that was on the hoarding. On behalf of all members of Parliament and candidates for office, we all share in the pain of those people who have been victims of graffiti. No doubt in a couple of years’ time, when we go back to that phase of democracy, we will be back out there trying to repair some of the damage that has been done to our hoardings.

I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to some of the local heroes in the Porirua area who have been working for many, many years to make sure that they eradicate graffiti from around the city. Most of them are from a programme run by the Porirua City Council, and I would just like to mention Charlie Devenish and Miranda Pittaway, who was formerly from Housing New Zealand Corporation. They did great work in making sure that they identified public places and put up tag-resistant murals in those areas. I am thinking of the mural in Hampshire Street, which I had the pleasure of helping to paint, and also on Mungavin Avenue, close to Holy Family School. It is those kinds of projects, as Julie Anne Genter said, that we should be focusing on. We should be beautifying those areas where taggers target, making sure we see the positive in this, and turning them into areas that we celebrate and make sure that they are visually stimulating. Then, I think, it sends the message out to those who might want to tag it that they should stay right away from it or suffer the consequences.

I pay tribute to the former graffiti management coordinator from the Porirua City Council, Trevor Mason, who worked very hard and has now retired from that role. He did very, very good work in terms of eradicating graffiti. I also pay tribute to the group known as WAG, the Waitangirua Action Group, which is a bunch of very hard-working mothers who go out and paint out a lot of the graffiti very quickly, as soon as it is put up in the Porirua East area. I also need to mention Liana Leiataua and Lepeti Tea, who have worked as coordinators as well, to make sure graffiti is stamped out in the Porirua area, and John Poppleton, who used to be with Keep Porirua Beautiful, and who has also worked hard to keep Porirua looking as beautiful as can be.

It is a pleasure to follow Kris Faafoi, except I felt it was an unfortunate start to his speech when I saw Mr Mallard sitting forward in anticipation and expectation when Kris said that he was going to congratulate a number of people, and he turned and said “But not you, Trevor.”

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Not yet.

Not yet. But I have never seen such a look of disappointment and a feeling of rejection. So I would like to begin, and have it on record, that I congratulate the Hon Trevor Mallard on bringing this bill, the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill, and shepherding it through the House, because it is a wonderful achievement and he should be pleased with the success that he has had.

I would like to perhaps introduce a slightly lighter look to graffiti, because everyone so far has been dealing with the heavy and very serious aspects of it. I do not wish to take that away, but I do remember—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Kilroy was here.

My opening phrase—“Kilroy was here”—because I knew—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: We remember.

I knew there would be someone who would remember. “Stop the war. Yanks go home.”—in my childhood that was about it, although on the West Coast there are some old graffiti signs saying “Cantabrians, don’t get your whitebait over here.”, and that sort of thing. But for the most part graffiti was always very occasional. It was not a feature when I was being brought up. But then I remember, when we moved to Christchurch, there was a garage door in Fendalton that had a new sign on it every week—quite nicely painted and quite nicely done, but it was a pithy sort of statement like “If the world isn’t flat, why do we keep trying to blow it up?”. It was quite the talk of the community. We wondered what the phrase was going to be the next week. And then there was a group of people in the flat who clearly had feminist views. It was mostly anti-men, but, again, it was amusing, it was witty. Then there was a long period of absence when either they had a tenant who did not want to write anything, or they did not have a tenant at all. The following week when you went past it was empty, and by the end of the week someone else had written on it “Say something”, because people were used to seeing that as they drove past.

But for the most part tagging is a negative experience, and I have heard of incidences today of how communities have been really working hard—hit it hard, as soon as it occurs—to get rid of it as soon as it occurs. Those people too are to be congratulated. I commend this bill to the House.

I will take a third call on behalf of New Zealand First on the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill. Can I just say that in looking at the background to Hutt City, it is very interesting to study this wonderful—relatively small by international standards, but a lovely size by New Zealand standards—city. It is interesting that on Women’s Suffrage Day, where the women have had the vote for 119 years, a bill affecting a small city in New Zealand would be getting its third and final reading through the House and showing what local democracy is all about in this country. At times I am sure many New Zealanders do ask what is happening with local democracy in this country, when you look—

💬 Hon Lianne Dalziel: Certainly after what’s happened in Christchurch.

—exactly—at what has happened in Canterbury, when you look at the steamroller that went through Auckland, when you look at the third, fourth, and fifth-largest cities in New Zealand being put out of existence in Auckland, with virtually no public consultation and, certainly, no referendum, and where you still have a city like Hutt City, which is able to still function fully with full democracy, full local democracy, and getting on with the job, as we heard before, but getting on with the job, in this case, of bringing a good thing to its people and to its community.

When I look at Hutt City and I see that it prides itself on the fact that it has something like 25 parks, 50 playgrounds, six swimming pools, eight public libraries, two museums, and the best beaches in the Wellington region, then, obviously, it is great to see that it is bringing forward a bill to reduce graffiti. It has so many public places, and it has so many areas where it does not want to be seeing, from recreational and public places, what is basically very antisocial graffiti on the walls of private properties adjoining public spaces. It also mentions that Hutt City has 10 secondary schools, 50 primary schools, and 40 early childhood centres. They have a lot of young people in Hutt City. They have a lot of young people who are very greatly influenced by their surroundings and their urban environment. If they grow up in an urban environment that is cluttered with graffiti and nasty, antisocial scrawlings on many of the faces of the walls and buildings around Hutt City, what sort of environment is that for them to grow up in? So it is a great thing that the Hutt City Council, with the Hon Trevor Mallard championing it, has brought this bill to this Chamber and to this House to have it put through. A proud city that evolved from the Hutt County Council from 1877, and in 1941 became Hutt City Council—1941; that is quite a long time ago—it now has something like 102,000 residents and is in the top 10 largest cities of this country. So it is very good.

I was certainly on the Local Government and Environment Committee and was very supportive of this initiative that it had to try to remove unwanted graffiti from private properties where it could not have that done, where, perhaps, landlords were absentee landlords overseas, or uncaring landlords, or people who simply took no interest in maintaining the properties—we went through stringent requirements with the select committee to ensure that they would still be given adequate notice, several weeks’ notice, to remove the graffiti and go through all the usual legalities of serving correct notice on the property owners—so that, at the end of the day, if the council wants to step in and remove some of that nasty graffiti from some of the structures around its city, which it has great pride in, it could do so.

So, also, I would like to recognise Mayor Ray Wallace and his city councillors, and the executive and staff of Hutt City Council, who have worked this through. I am sure there will be many other city councils and other local authorities in New Zealand that will wish to do the same. Indeed, I can see that Wellington City Council itself would like to do the same. Hutt City is the second-largest city in the Wellington region. I have no doubt that others like Wellington City, Porirua, and others, will want to follow suit in due course, particularly when they see the significant difference that this can make in the region.

I have mentioned in the House before that when I was Mayor of North Shore, we had a problem for many years, and we got on top of it. It was costing us in the order of $600,000-odd a year for graffiti and vandalism, but we put in place a team to get on top of the problem—former policemen, incidentally, who came to work for the council; retired policemen—who started to profile the taggers, started to work out who they were, and started to keep a very comprehensive database of the regular taggers. When the taggers were apprehended by the Waitematā District Police and we could put two and two together and identify who the culprits were in each instance, it had significant effects on having them desist and cease their activities, but also on getting some restitution from those offenders. Where restitution was not possible, they certainly were put through the mill and had to undertake community work. In many cases the community work included removing not only many of their own tags but also other people’s tags to give them a good lesson in having some respect for other people’s property.

In respect of this, however, we in New Zealand First are somewhat concerned that perhaps this is, in a sense, the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, in that this is fixing the graffiti at the end of the day once it is there, rather than, perhaps, preventing it before it even gets there. And that comes back to the education of our young people—good schooling, good upbringing, and, you know, good tuition from their teachers and from the parental guidance that they get, which is most important in this country. But also it comes back to resources within our police and our authorities to be able to ensure that people can get on top of this and the police can actually provide a presence in many of these communities so that this does not occur. Because, at the end of the day, if there is not much of a police presence in our communities, you can end up with antisocial behaviour, and often the antisocial behaviour goes hand in hand with the likes of graffiti, tagging, and vandalism, and often that in turn leads to much more serious crime. At the end of the day, if we can knock it on the head before it even gets to that stage, with greater police resources, so much the better.

In that regard I was very pleased that a number of years ago New Zealand First was the party that helped push through this House—this is a number of years ago under a Labour Government—a measure to get another thousand police on the beat around New Zealand. A thousand more police on the beat, under the Labour Government, supported by the initiative from New Zealand First to do that, negotiated by Rt Hon Winston Peters, to get a thousand more police out there in our communities. These are the sorts of resources that are needed around our country to ensure that this happens.

On another note we also need to have safeguards, and one of the safeguards with graffiti and vandalism is ensuring that the source of the materials used is also restricted. In that respect restricting access to aerosol cans and keeping them in DIY stores, in dairies, and in other places in locked cabinets so that nobody can just walk in and grab one off the shelf, or steal it, or try to get away with it as a young minor—these are the sorts of things that we do have to do to ensure that we restrict the access. Obviously, they have to use something to deface a fence, a wall, a house, a building, or whatever, and often it is aerosol paints that are used. So restricting access to those is very, very important.

In closing, can I just again commend all those who are involved with this. This is a good initiative. This is local government doing what local government is good at. It is bringing the concerns of its people, of its citizens, and of its communities to this Parliament, and it is getting things done. This is allowing local government to speak on behalf of its people. This is ensuring that on the 119th anniversary of women’s suffrage and giving women the vote, a local voice is heard, in the Hutt City Council and in this Parliament from the Hutt City Council. We certainly want to ensure that this sort of local democracy, local government, continues through all the communities of New Zealand and is not steamrolled out of existence by a National Government that really has very, very little interest in supporting the second tier of government in this country, a most important tier of government in this country, which, basically, is the glue for our communities to operate. Thank you.

Sometimes in this House there are some things that are really hard to say. I am going to attempt one right now: Good on Trevor Mallard for bringing this bill, the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill, into the House. I hope I do not have to say that too often in my time here. This is a good little piece of legislation that Trevor Mallard has helped to shepherd through for the Hutt City Council. Congratulations also to the Hutt City Council on proposing it, and to the mayor, Ray Wallace.

I will just be very brief here, because it is a simple bill and one that seems to have a lot of support around the House. Graffiti is a scourge on the local communities. It is something that locals dislike a lot. When it comes to graffiti on private property, it can be difficult for councils to clean it up, and for those who have their property graffitied on a regular basis, it can be time-consuming, and it can be costly for them to clean it up. So enabling the local authority to have the power to go in, after giving the property owner notice to go and clean it up, is a good thing, indeed. My only regret is that this is not actually a nationwide piece of legislation, because I think it would be quite good as a nationwide one.

💬 Chris Hipkins: We’ve got a lazy Government.

Perhaps if we have some decent member’s bill ideas coming forward from the other side of the House—they could consider that for their members’ bills, rather than some of the things that are going to actually cost people jobs, and cost employers their ability to employ people. This bill is a good one. I support it and hope that it gets through unanimously.

I understand the next call is a split call. I will ring the bell at 4 minutes.

That was a very insightful call from Jami-Lee Ross. It is not often that we get National members standing up in the House and delivering such honest appraisals of their own Government’s performance, as we just saw from Jami-Lee Ross, who was condemning his own Government for not picking up the principle behind this piece of legislation, the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill, and making it a national bill. That was effectively what he just did. He took only 30 seconds to do it, and it was a very accurate appraisal of the Government’s performance on this issue.

💬 Hon Lianne Dalziel: They need the Opposition on this bill.

That is right. It needs the Opposition to do it. I do take great pleasure in rising to speak in favour of this particular piece of legislation in the name of my colleague Trevor Mallard. I know that he has put a huge amount of work into this piece of legislation, and I only hope that in about 25 years’ time, after I have also been in Parliament for the equivalent length of time as Mr Mallard, I too may have a bill such as the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill passed through the House in my name.

But, perhaps on a more serious note, I do want to acknowledge the Hutt City Council, although I have a problem with that in one respect. I grew up in Lower Hutt. I do not know where this place Hutt City is. Actually, if you go to the New Zealand Geographic Board, it does not know where Hutt City is, either. There is Lower Hutt, and there is Upper Hutt, and in the not too distant past some empire-building mayor in Lower Hutt decided that he was going to rename Lower Hutt as Hutt City. There is actually no such place as Hutt City. And I can say that because I was born there and I grew up there. I do not know where this place Hutt City actually is. It is Lower Hutt, it has always been Lower Hutt, and it is still Lower Hutt. So that is just a little bit of my pet peeve for the day, which I just wanted to get off my chest. Now that I have done that, I want to turn a little bit more to the substance of the bill.

Graffiti has been a problem in the Hutt Valley, not just in Lower Hutt but in Upper Hutt as well, and this piece of legislation will allow the Lower Hutt council, or the Hutt City Council as it prefers to call itself, to remove graffiti from private property in certain circumstances. I just want to put into context what we are talking about here. We are not necessarily talking about garage doors, because in the case of a garage door on somebody’s house, it is not that difficult for the council to go and knock on their door and say “Hey, you’ve got graffiti there. Can we remove it?”. That is generally not where the problem begins. The problem begins in buildings that are not currently occupied. I will give an example of an old, empty factory that might back on to the riverbank, for example. In that case it can take a long time to actually figure out who owns it, to get hold of the owner if there is no tenant at the moment, and say “Actually, do you mind if we remove the graffiti?”. Of course, in 99 percent of the cases they say “Well, we don’t really care. Do whatever you like.”, but at the moment it is taking the council a long time to track down who those owners are and get their permission. What this bill says is just go ahead and do it. I think that is quite a reasonable thing for the council to be doing.

There are buildings in the Hutt Valley where it could take some time to track down the owners. I know of a building in Upper Hutt that will not be covered by this legislation, where the owner is based offshore. The building is no longer occupied, it is vandalised on a regular basis, and the owner actually just does not care. The owner does not live in New Zealand, does not have to drive past this particular property every day, and just does not care. If that property was in Lower Hutt, under this piece of legislation the council would be able to do something about that.

I think it is a welcome initiative. Graffiti is something that simply drives people mad. It is pointless. It is destructive. It is the destruction of people’s private properties. I really feel for some of the residents in my neighbourhood, actually, in Trentham, who I see out there painting their fences or waterblasting their fences on a fairly regular basis. It must be infuriating for them to have to get out there and repaint their fences after these little toe-rags basically get out there and—

💬 Kris Faafoi: Toe-rags?

—that is right—vandalise their fences. But, actually, where I think there is another problem area, which I do not think this bill necessarily addresses and which we are seeing increasingly throughout the Hutt Valley, is etching. Etching of glass windows costs a heck of a lot more for local businesses than painting. Painting can be removed with a bit of turps. Etching is very, very expensive, and that is something that I think we need to find some solutions to as well. I know that it is costing our local businesses—

Sorry to interrupt the honourable member.

I am pleased to take a brief call to reaffirm the Greens support for this bill, the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill. At the risk of further offending Mr Hipkins’ sensibilities, I will refer to the Hutt City Council, given that it is the entity in whose name this bill is. It does deserve congratulations, particularly to the mayor, who I understand has provided some real leadership on this to get the solution to this point where the bill is being passed into law.

I do not pretend to know either Upper Hutt or Lower Hutt well. Certainly, I have no particular close experience of them. But having up until quite recently lived much of my life in Auckland City, I am no stranger to graffiti or to the significant cost that is imposed visually, socially, and, not least of all, economically. I think there would be a very strong case to encourage other councils to pick up a similar piece of legislation, and for this House to create some sort of general law that would enable other councils to resolve the issue of entering on to private land to remove this unsightly blot on the landscape, which graffiti is and always will be.

As I said, I do not know the Hutt particularly well, but I am interested to note that in the report from the Local Government and Environment Committee comparison was made with the Auckland rail corridor. I do know a thing or two about the scale of the problem in that context. I know that KiwiRail, supported by some very able and willing volunteer groups, has been working incredibly hard to try to clean up the Auckland rail corridor. So if Hutt City is experiencing the problem on the same scale as that, then it most certainly does have a problem. Indeed, KiwiRail in Auckland ran up against the same issue of private buildings bordering its rail corridor. It needed to seek permission to go and actually remove the graffiti there, for the simple reason that it had no absolute right to deal with that. A bill of this nature, I suspect, would have facilitated that process for it considerably, and for that reason the bill is to be supported.

The point has been made that the Greens did oppose a previous attempt to manage graffiti, which was the Manukau solution as it was possessed at the time. We saw that that was not the path to go down, to effectively criminalise young people for simply carrying marker pens. It was a highly complicated and somewhat punitive approach. This is a much cleaner, simpler approach. It simply puts the solution in the hands of the local authority in the community, not without considerable cost, and I acknowledge that, but over time hopefully we will uncover and apply some longer-term solutions.

Like Mr Auchinvole, I am actually old enough to recall when graffiti really was not particularly a problem in our cities, towns, and elsewhere. It is unfortunate to see that it has become so ubiquitous, so costly, and so negative in our communities. In fact, I recall in the late 1970s, just as a hobby, I did some photographic courses and did a little bit of a photographic essay of some of the graffiti that was around Auckland. Almost without exception it was social and political commentary. Some of it was very clever, some of it was very witty, and some of it was very apt to the political context of the day. That is not to excuse it or suggest that it is acceptable, but I literally had to go looking for examples of graffiti, and that was not that long ago. Nowadays, of course, one is hard-pressed in many areas or in many communities to find a wall that has not been defaced at some point. We have certainly got to a serious situation with this graffiti.

I think the definition of graffiti in the bill is good. I think it is a very useful and positive addition to the bill—to the legislation—that we are defining very clearly what it is we are talking about, to avoid the unfortunate incidents where murals—“graffiti art”, as it is referred to, will be protected. Again, I am not particularly a fan of graffiti art, but I acknowledge that there are many who do admire it and appreciate it, and it has proven to be a very effective mechanism for preventing the tagging, the defacing, that we are seeing far too much of.

As I have said, we need to continue to investigate the root causes: youth alienation and the fact that particularly youth who perform the tagging clearly have no empathy, no sense of the impact and the negative costs they are imposing, the social costs, and making people feel vulnerable if their homes or properties are damaged by graffiti. That is a much more difficult task. It will take a great deal of work by local government, community, and other authorities. I commend this bill and the Hutt City Council for this very useful measure. Kia ora.

This is a very brief call—the last one from the National Party benches—that certainly commends the work of the Hon Trevor Mallard for a very sensible bill, the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill, and also the Local Government and Environment Committee and the approach it has taken on it.

Just very briefly, Rudi Giuliani, a former Mayor of New York, coined the phrase “broken windows”. That was born out of his approach to addressing petty crime at the bottom to bring the murder rate down. What he established through that was that if the city got on top of graffiti and those jumping the turnstiles to skip a dollar, it actually drove the homicide rate down and the serious crime rate down. That was something that was introduced in New Zealand in many police forces across the country. That approach is very much reflected in this bill. It will not only take care of the unsightly nature of graffiti and the impact that it has in terms of a community’s sense of pride, safety, and so forth, but it will actually, I am sure, have an impact on bringing down other crime related to it. I have no problem in commending this bill and the sponsoring member to the House. Thank you very much.

As a member of the Local Government and Environment Committee that considered this bill, the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill, I am very happy to take a call and congratulate my colleague the Hon Trevor Mallard on shepherding this piece of legislation through the House. He worked very hard in the select committee, as the conduit between our committee and the Hutt City Council, to ensure that the changes that we were considering were deemed to be both acceptable and effective by the Hutt City Council. I think we have ended up with a piece of legislation that is not only workable but will be very effective in the Hutt City Council’s fight to eradicate graffiti in its area.

The issue of graffiti and tagging has been a major issue in Lower Hutt, going back many, many, many years. This is not a new issue. This is not something the council has only just decided to try to address—although I do note that Mayor Ray Wallace did make a plank of his election campaign a war on graffiti. Unfortunately, Lower Hutt is one of the worst areas in the country for tagging and for graffiti, and given that it is actually such a lovely part of the Wellington district, anything that serves to better the image of that community—throughout the rest of Wellington and the country—is indeed welcome.

Before I came into Parliament, I was a member of the Pētone Community Board in Lower Hutt. Graffiti was one of the main issues that people brought to us as a community board. Along with the protection of heritage buildings, one of the biggest issues that our community faced was the issue of tagging and graffiti. People would come to our community board meetings when, for example, there was a public building or a private residence that was significantly damaged, significantly graffitied, and say that they could not understand why nothing was being done about it. When they came to us, we would liaise with council officers.

What we often found were the very problems that have led to this piece of legislation, which are that often the people who owned the buildings were absentees; they were not there. Often they had not been paying rates, so it was clear that they had basically just departed from the district, and really had no more interest in the upkeep of that building. In the case of private buildings, sometimes they were dealing with tenants, who were not able to either fix it themselves—did not have the financial means—or felt that under the law, under residential tenancy legislation, it should be the landlord’s responsibility to do that work.

Whereas the council could often get the approval of the tenants, getting the approval of the landlords who actually owned the property was sometimes very, very difficult to do. We often ended up in the situation of having to say to them that we did not have the right to just walk on to someone’s property and make alterations; we could not find the people who own the building, we could not find the people who lease the building, and, therefore, our hands were really tied. That, obviously, does not go down particularly well with the members of the community who pay rates and who feel very proud of their community, and who get very disturbed and upset when they see buildings being defaced in the way that, unfortunately, they have been throughout Lower Hutt, and, in fact, throughout the country.

I think the comment that this is perhaps something that could be picked up by other councils is very pertinent. But as a member of the Local Government and Environment Committee, which has an enormous amount of legislation before it, we would probably rather see one Government bill than 60 different local government bills coming to our committee on this issue. So maybe it is something that the Government could pick up, to see whether or not there is a need and a demand for it throughout the rest of the country. As I said, our committee has done the work on it. Trevor Mallard has done the work on it. Certainly, the Hutt City Council and the issues, historically, that it has been facing with tagging and graffiti provided a very good basis for developing this legislation. I think it will be very easy to pick it up and roll it out throughout the rest of the country.

There are many reasons why this is an important issue. It might not seem like a big issue to some people, but serious issues of tagging and graffiti do affect property values for those people who live in the community around them. If someone sees an area where there is an enormous amount of tagging, where there may be a row of buildings owned by someone who is not present in the district and is not contactable, it can send a message out about that community that is very negative, which may affect the property values of other people around them, even if, in fact, that negative perception is not true. And so, in terms of the rights of other property owners in that area, this is a very important piece of legislation for them.

But I think one of the biggest reasons why this is important is that the quick removal of tagging, in particular, but graffiti in general, provides a strong disincentive against doing it again. What we know is that the longer it is left there, the longer the taggers—the people who are doing the graffiti—can get the satisfaction of seeing it, and the more likely they are to try to do it again or get the message that if they do it, it is something that is going to be there long term; that no one is going to do anything about it, and they can brag about it. The quicker you get rid of it and make it clear that as soon as it goes up it is coming down, then the quicker they will lose interest in going to those buildings and carrying out this particular destructive activity.

I want to note that the Hutt City Council has been dealing with this for a long time. It has a graffiti eradication officer. The council has been spending up to half a million dollars a year on graffiti removal in its community. The council, through its graffiti eradication officer, has been working with the community. So this is not simply just an approach of “This is the only thing we are going to do, and the minute it goes up, we are going to take it down.” The council has been engaging with the community and trying to address the underlying issues in those communities that lead to this antisocial behaviour, that lead to this destructive behaviour. That is a very important part of the equation, because times are very tough.

Unfortunately, when times get really tough, often we see an increase in these levels of antisocial behaviour. I would hate to see this bill not being seen in the context of the very difficult economic times in which we find ourselves. Putting it back on the Government members, a number of whom have made very positive comments about this piece of legislation, we certainly welcome their support for it, but I just say to them to not ever forget that the Government has a role in ensuring that we can have the kind of economy and the kind of community that does not lead to vast increases in antisocial behaviour because of economic hardship. Certainly, I know that around the country we have seen increases in antisocial behaviour. Do not take it out of context. Do not think that this bill is fixing it. This is actually a much, much bigger problem.

Sometimes I think we can get ourselves into this little bubble of this piece of legislation and lose sight of the big picture, which is that we need to deal with the core causes of antisocial behaviour, of this kind of destructive behaviour, by young people who feel so disconnected from their community that they can just go out and deface it. That is a worrying trend that you see. It is easy to just write them off and call them names, and do this, and that, and the other thing. But let us not be that glib about it, is all that I would say.

I think you have only to look around the world at some of the antisocial behaviour that is coming out of communities and, in particular, by young people, to see that there is something there that needs to be addressed. You never excuse the behaviour, but it is important to try to understand it and see if there is something far more serious lying at the base of it.

The select committee made a number of important changes to the legislation. One was actually to include a definition of “graffiti”. I think, again, it is important to put that in context. The Hutt City Council made it quite clear to us that there was not a lot of grey area in terms of the buildings that it was talking about. There were concerns, and I think we addressed them at the select committee, around the definition of graffiti, about where you get that line between graffiti and art.

What the council said to us was that it was not dealing with any cases where it thought anyone would seriously think that it was art; it was dealing with cases where it was clearly tagging, where it was clearly meant to offend, it was clearly meant to damage, and it was pretty cut and dried. But, yes, having a definition in the bill would mean that if it ever did come up with a case, from time to time, where there might be that line, then it had no problem with that safety net, if you like, being put in the legislation.

I think in terms of what the Hutt City Council are dealing with, and for people who might be listening to this debate and worrying that we are going to be starting to get into that area where the lines are blurred, we are not. What they are trying to deal with in the Hutt City is clearly graffiti. It is clearly meant to offend. This legislation will give the council the ability to deal with that.

We also made it very clear that this is graffiti in public sight. In terms of extending the powers of the council to go on to private property, it is where the graffiti is visible from a public point of view. So if it is right around the back of a house, the council would not have the right to go around there. There were some people who thought the council should have the right to go all the way around and remove graffiti if it was offensive and if it was meant just to deface. But we were very clear. This is where it is viewed from a public viewpoint. We were very clear that this is not about graffiti art, even though the council was telling us that that is absolutely not a problem.

I want to commend the Hutt City Council. It has done an awful lot of work. It has done an awful lot of work with utility providers, because power poles and power boxes are a target for taggers. I just want to acknowledge the huge amount of work that the council has put in to try to address the problem, without having to come to Parliament to ask for legislation. It has done amazing work. We find ourselves, along with the council, saying that it just needs this bit of legislation for us to get it over the line, so that we really can declare the war on graffiti that Mayor Wallace said that he was going to do when he was elected.

Members, this debate is concluded. The question is that the motion be agreed to. Those of that opinion will say Aye, of the contrary opinion will say No. The Ayes have it.

💬 Brendan Horan: Party vote called for.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): You can ask for a party vote only if you are voting against it. Are you voting against it?

💬 Brendan Horan: Oh, sorry.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): You ask for a party vote only if you are disputing the call that I gave. I said that the Ayes have it. The Ayes have it.

Bill read a third time.