Hipkins Chris: Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill — First Reading 
Hipkins Chris: Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill — First Reading 
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CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I rise in support of the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill and I want to commend Trevor Mallard and the Hutt City Council for bringing it forward. When we had discussions midway through last year about this piece of legislation I also discussed the matter with the Upper Hutt City Council to see whether in fact a bill that had wider application for both Upper Hutt and Lower Hutt would be useful. The issues are actually slightly different.  
In Upper Hutt the bigger problem we have is not so much about graffiti not being removed but about the nature of the graffiti. In Upper Hutt the problem we have at the moment is around etching of windows where the taggers basically scratch whatever their mark is into the windows of shops. It is actually a heck of a lot more expensive than spray-paint or crayons or whatever other materials often get used. Shoe polish seems to be one of the things of the moment for taggers. But the scratching into the windows is a heck of a lot more expensive and it is not something that the council can remove; it is actually something that the landlord does need to remove. No matter what happens it is expensive because there are certain products that can remove the scratching once without having to replace the glass panes but that can only happen a certain number of times before the whole glass pane has to be removed. Shop front windows are not cheap and we are talking about people who go from one end of the main street to the other doing over a whole heap of windows and it starts to get pretty blimmin expensive. So that is the bigger issue that we face at the moment.  
But I think when I have looked into this the causal issue is the same no matter what the method of graffitiing is. Quite often it is around boredom amongst some of the younger people. They do not have other things to do and that is something that I know the councils in both Upper Hutt and Lower Hutt are also working on. But there is also an element of dysfunction in the family lives of some of the young people who do this. I know this because we have a couple of graffiti artists in Upper Hutt who have been repeat artists—well you know taggers—who have repeatedly been picked up by the police taken home and within an hour or two of being taken home they are back out on the street again doing exactly the same thing as they were doing before they got picked up. I am not sure that there is any legislation that this House could pass that is going to remedy that problem. The problem is a much wider one than simply the graffiti; the problem is the dysfunctional family that is allowing that to go on. These are not even kids in their late teens or anything; some of them are actually very young. Some of them are intermediate school age or even younger and I think that is a real tragedy. That is a much wider problem that we need to address if we are going to get serious about this.  
The bill that Trevor Mallard has brought forward however is a very useful one. There are a number of buildings over time that get effectively abandoned and there can be commercial reasons why they get abandoned as well. I have a building—it is not really a building but a property—in my electorate where a large multinational company and I will not name it is signed into a long-term lease for it. The owner of the property does not live in New Zealand but because the people who have signed into it are still paying the lease the landlord does not actually care what happens to the property. So the property is regularly being done over by taggers with spray-paint or with whatever and tracking down the landlord to get the landlord to remedy the problem can be difficult because the landlord does not actually care. The landlord is still getting the rent. It is still getting the money in so it is not interested in doing anything to this.  
The council has actually been pretty— 
Michael Woodhouse 
: That’s a sweeping generalisation. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: No no this is just one example. This is a specific example I am talking about. I am not talking about this in general but it is an illustration of where this legislation will be useful. In this specific example the landlord does not even live in New Zealand and does not care. The council gets on to it and says “We want you to remove the graffiti.” and now and then it will happen but not all of the time. This bill here will give the council the power—well actually it will not because this applies only to Lower Hutt but if it did in Upper Hutt where the building that I am talking about is—to go in and remove it. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: We could shift the building. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Yeah we could shift the building. You can have the building I tell you; nobody wants it. But that of course raises a wider concern which is that councils—under this legislation the Hutt City Council—will need to bear the cost of that. I think that we do need to consider whether there should be some cost recovery mechanism for that because I am not sure that local ratepayers should be having to pay for the landlords not doing their bit. Of course that begs the wider question of what liability the people who do the damage in the first place should face and that is also one of those issues that need to be addressed. It is a good piece of legislation. It is overdue. I think it will be very much welcomed by the people of the Hutt Valley and I look forward to its passage through the House.