Collins Judith: Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Collins Judith: Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 19 June 2008. Volume:647;Page:16788. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to rise on behalf of the National Party to support the Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill.  
The first duty of any Government is to protects its citizens and although graffiti will not of itself kill people it certainly does help to create an environment in which people think they do not have to respect other people’s rights other people’s property or other people’s lives. We have seen in the last week or so some pretty appalling headlines as a result of some of the activities in South Auckland. They are not headlines that I—or any other member of Parliament who represents a South Auckland electorate—want to see ever again. We have had a crime wave that has resulted in deaths of innocent people and people have been living in fear. Headlines such as: “Fear on streets of Manukau” are not the sorts of headlines we want to see ever again.  
I have some information for the House about why this bill is important. We know that this bill will not stop graffiti. We know that. We know that graffiti vandalism is already an offence under the existing law. So why are we doing this? Well partly it is because we actually need to show some leadership in this community and the leadership of a country needs to set an example. If we continue down a track of treating graffiti vandalism as though it is a minor issue as though it is some form of resistance artwork—as the Children’s Commissioner described it—as though we will take it as some sort of rite of passage then we will continue to see a breakdown of law and order and of the rule of law in our country.  
Anybody who wishes to travel by train in Auckland from Papakura in my electorate through to Auckland City will be greeted by a mass of graffiti. All the way along the track line every building is absolutely smothered in it—just like the Los Angeles - style gang graffiti. That is because we now have—in South Auckland in particular and in other parts of the country as well—a Los Angeles - style street-gang culture which has emerged over the last decade or so. I can tell this House that I have seen youth gangs—or street gangs as I should refer to them because many of their members are in their 30s—recruiting outside our high schools. I have seen that happening. I have seen them strolling along the streets with their particular colours and I have seen the fear that they engender in the eyes of dairy owners and others who have to deal with them. I have had these property and business owners come into my electorate office in Papakura and tell me about the stand-over tactics that occur. I have talked to the police about it; I have been to see them. They have been to see me and we have been to see the victims. But it is all really a bit late by then because by that stage the culture and the climate have been set.  
Until we start to take small crime seriously we can expect big crime to come from that. I know that generally nobody is killed by graffiti itself but I certainly know that when we look at street-gang killers we see that every single one of them has started off in the culture of the Los Angeles - style street gangs. In fact they have started off with graffiti handbag snatching—all those sorts of things that we used to call reasonably petty crime—graduating their way up the scale until they move on to murder the manufacture of P and all those sorts of violent and awful offences.  
We have to send a message to New Zealand that we do not indulge in that sort of behaviour. We have to send a message to our police that we will support them when they have to make tough decisions. We have to send a message to our police that we will not always judge them with the benefit of hindsight because that is what we tend to do in this country. It is all very well being an expert on what the police should have done or should not have done until one is in the situation of having one’s life endangered. It is all very well expecting the police to be all soft and cuddly and caring at all stages when they have to deal with some pretty difficult characters who are not soft and caring in any circumstance.  
We have to back our police; we have to get tough. It is not of course just about our getting tough with laws; it is about allowing the police to have the power to actually do the job for us. The police these days are not necessarily confronting the same risks that they confronted 30 years ago. There was then no such thing—that we knew of anyway—as methamphetamine use. We did not know about this thing called P. We did not in fact have Los Angeles - style gangs.  
Nandor Tanczos 
: We had a heroin epidemic! 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: The member over there wishes to talk about heroin. Well we certainly did have some heroin but I can tell the member that the effects of P in this country today are significantly more devastating than the effects of the use of heroin about 30 years ago. A large amount of that is about the availability of it. A large amount of it is about the celebrity culture that is now part of this drug culture. It is the fact that we have a Los Angeles - style American-style gang culture that is celebrated by some parts of our society who frankly should know better and who should understand that part of leadership is about saying that some things are right and some things are wrong and it is wrong to go into someone’s dairy or bottle shop and kill them for fun. It is wrong to do that. It is wrong to deface other people’s property. It is wrong to graffiti all over streets just to show whose patch it is. It is wrong to do that and it is wrong for our society to stand by and say: “It doesn’t really matter because it’s not my place.”  
The people who are most affected by the harm of the culture that graffiti vandalism brings with it are our poor people—the people who do not have choices about where they live. It is all very well for members who want to hang out in Wellington Central or other places like it that are high-income areas to say: “Well is this really important?” because they do not have to face it every single day. They do not have to face it on the train from Papakura to Auckland City. They do not have to face it in their school. They do not have to wake up and see it all over their fences. They do not have to live with it and they do not have to see themselves and their children being threatened.  
When we talk about representing children—and this is one of the things that is most disappointing about the Children’s Commissioner’s comments on graffiti—how about the children who do not want to be part of the graffiti vandalism culture? How about the children who want to go to school and not be in fear because of the street gangs that will try to recruit them after school? How about them? How about their civil liberties? How about taking that seriously?  
When we talk about the Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill and what we can achieve we know we can certainly achieve one thing: we can achieve a great deal of cross-party support. The reason for that is that—particularly in South Auckland but also in other places in this country—we have seen MPs coming together across parties to say what their constituents want. Certainly some people have asked why we in the National Party are supporting a Government bill and why we supported George Hawkins’ previous bill on this. It is because it is actually about trying to do something. It is actually about trying to understand what our constituents want what they need and what we can do. So it is our job to send a message to New Zealanders that we care enough about them to do what we can and it is also our job to send a message to New Zealanders that we are there for them that we listen to them and that we will do our very best.