Wagner Nicky: Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill — First Reading 
Wagner Nicky: Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill — First Reading 
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NICKY WAGNER (National—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 I rise to support this Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill which is sponsored by the Hon Trevor Mallard. The phenomena of graffiti and tagging on public and private property in cities have become a real problem in the 20th and 21st centuries although I have heard that they have identified graffiti in the ruins of Pompeii so it is obviously not a new phenomenon.  
But it challenges communities all around the world. Cities suburbs and communities that are dominated by graffiti-laden buildings look and feel unkempt and dangerous. It looks as if nobody cares. It looks as if nobody is engaged with or identified with the community. It looks like civil society is broken and is disordered. Neighbourhoods who look after each other make sure that their communities are clean and pleasant and they react quickly to any damage to their streets cleaning up tagging and graffiti as soon as possible. It is a bit of a vicious cycle: people behave badly in run-down - looking graffiti-ridden communities and run-down - looking graffiti-ridden communities make people behave badly. So I do have sympathy with the Hutt City Council and support its struggle to eradicate graffiti in Lower Hutt.  
The Hutt Valley has had its fair share—or perhaps more than its fair share—of graffiti and the public have had enough of it and it was interesting to hear Trevor Mallard talking about their local body elections and how they campaigned on removing graffiti. I have to acknowledge that the council has worked hard to control the problem but nobody really feels that it is making any progress. The council believes that to do the job properly it needs to be able to clean graffiti and tagging off private property. It is well known that the only way to deal with graffiti is to clean it off or paint it out as soon as possible. Those who enjoy tagging and damaging buildings also enjoy viewing their work and showing it off for a long time afterwards so the biggest deterrent to graffiti is to clean it off immediately.  
I note that since June 2011 the Hutt City Council has implemented a rapid response graffiti removal initiative which commits to removing graffiti within 48 hours. That is a lot quicker than in the past when it committed to 72 hours. So the Hutt City Council regularly and quickly cleans and removes graffiti from all public areas but it has had no ability to tackle the issue of graffiti on private property.  
This bill is designed to change all that. It empowers the Hutt City Council to clean graffiti and tagging off private property whether it is a building a structure a road or paved surface or even an object as long as it is visible from a public place within the district of the Hutt City Council. However before the work begins the council has to make every effort to consult with the owners of the buildings and it was interesting to hear Trevor Mallard explaining that many of these buildings in the Hutt Valley are neglected and have absentee landlords. So it is important that it makes every attempt to contact the owners and that it gives them 10 days’ notice in writing supplying full details to clean up the property. Then regardless of whether it hears from those owners or not it can get on with the work.  
So this bill does seem to be a logical and a sensible response to a difficult issue which needs to be addressed. I look forward to being on the Local Government and Environment Committee as we look at this bill. We will take note from Trevor Mallard that we should consider the definition of “graffiti”. I commend this bill to the House.