Flavell Te Ururoa: Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill — In Committee 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:646;Page:15330] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Chairperson. Tena tatou katoa e te Whare i tenei po. Kua oti ke i a au te korero mo etahi take. Kua ara ake ki te korero mo te wa poto nei mo tenei take. 
[ 
Greetings to you Mr Chairperson and to all of us in the Chamber tonight. I have already addressed other matters but rise for a brief moment to talk about this one 
.] 
I have chosen to take a short call following on from our party’s co-leader Pita Sharples. I will not take very long but I will try to highlight a few issues that I have heard talked about in the debate. The debate has been good in some parts and lousy in others. In my own town of Rotorua the premier ancestral house of Te Arawa—Tama te Kapua—was tagged about a month ago. When reporters came to see me about that tagging they asked for my response and inevitably I gave them one which was not all that nice in the sense that I did not endorse any actions by any taggers. I do not think that very many of us are in the game of endorsing tagging. So members should take it as mentioned by our co-leader that it is not as though our stand with regard to this bill is about the notion of endorsing tagging in any way shape or form. 
As I have been listening to the korero about the question of what a tagger is my colleague Pita Sharples referred to the fact that taggers are not gang members yet on the other side of the Chamber other members have said taggers are gang members. Some members have said they are of a certain age bracket. My colleague Pita Sharples who has been associated with some projects to look at these sorts of issues says taggers are probably young. I think the member in the chair Mr Hawkins mentioned the notion of many of them being involved in using drugs and alcohol. Or really are they just as Maori would say plain haututu—or hoha for some of us? Are they looking for something to do? It could be any of those issues. 
We have not necessarily come to grips with where tagging sits but the biggest question for me is whether giving the police in any way shape or form the opportunity to round up these—probably—young ones will really solve the problem. Is it really about that? Mr Gallagher said that many church groups and others—and Mr Mark referred to this as well—have positive initiatives that deal with the issue after the fact. That is probably the real issue. But I do not know whether the notion of having the police deal with these sorts of issues will do very much for the notion of police relationships with people who possibly already have negative attitudes towards the police. It could become like what happened with regard to the Tuhoe nation at the end of last year. Does anyone really think that the police action over their arrival in the Tuhoe nation will develop positive relationships with Tuhoe? I do not think so. 
The big thing for me is the question of whether we really think the actions we are taking tonight will stop the problem. Does this legislation really mean to say that people will not go and get spray-cans or access to those sorts of things in order to enable them to tag? For my part I do not think so. Therefore we need to look a lot wider at the issue. Firstly we need to deal with the issue before it happens such that we take care of that issue and the concerns that people like Mr Mark talked about. Secondly we need to deal with what happens to those people afterwards. Other members have talked about some initiatives with regard to that. 
I note that students at one particular school in Auckland apparently decided for one reason or another to put each other into the world of technology through Bebo and to show the world how they are beating each other up at their school—I think it was St Paul’s College. Those images were shown to the whole wide world on television this evening. I think to myself: “Well is it just about tagging or do we have a bigger issue here?”. If young people at school in a controlled environment are able to go about doing that sort of stuff with no teachers or staff around and not just once or twice but on many occasions then I suggest to the Committee that the issues we are talking about are far bigger than those that have been discussed tonight. 
We need to look at the bigger picture. We are dealing with this one notion about tagging and sure it happens in Manukau. To me this bill is a piecemeal approach to something that is far and away a bigger problem. We should look at that picture as opposed to looking at just this one thing in isolation.