Mallard Trevor: Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Mallard Trevor: Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 15 August 2012. Volume:682;Page:4407. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I move  
That the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill be now read a second time 
. I want at the start to thank the Local Government and Environment Committee for the hearing that it gave this bill and the suggestions it has made for the House to adopt all of which I as sponsor of the bill concur with. I will go to those at the end. I am not going to breach Standing Orders by acknowledging the Mayor of Lower Hutt who is in the gallery today because if I did then it would. Therefore I will not. But Ray Wallace when he was campaigning for the mayoralty and when elected mayor declared war on graffiti in Lower Hutt and has had a coherent approach with a team for rapid action in private areas where graffiti is visible and where access is approved by the owners and in public areas for rapid response often the first day that it is reported. But also there is a coherent programme of art for kids and other things in order to move some of the real talent on to positive work. 
The main aim of this bill is to empower the city 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. I do want to make it clear that if owners do not want graffiti removed then it will not be removed. What this does is fill a gap in the law which was the cause of quite a number of eyesores in Lower Hutt—and actually around the country as well—where there are effectively absentee owners people who have semi-abandoned properties where they pay the rates maybe or pay them very late but they are completely out of contact. Some of these are Kiwis who have shifted offshore but in New Zealand more and more there are cases of overseas companies owning small commercial areas where maybe they have not made a good investment and as a result of that there is an inability to make contact with them. 
It is my view that having a lot of graffiti around and a lot of tagging in a community is a signal of a lack of social cohesion. It gives a perception of danger it does reduce property values for owners who are nearby and it has a detrimental effect on the image of a city and often therefore on its well-being. Under the Summary Offences Act 1981 if people are caught in the act there is some deterrence in there but it does not give the ability to clean up graffiti on private property unless there can be good contact with the owner. 
The Local Government and Environment Committee heard a range of submissions—not a large number but a range of submissions; most of those I think made useful suggestions—and has recommended some changes to the bill. The first of those changes is to clarify the purpose statement to state that the purpose of the bill is “to allow the removal from private property of graffiti that is visible from a public place.” So if the graffiti is inside or it is around the back it is not the role of the council—it is not wider—to remove it. It is what is visible from a public place. 
 There is a definition of graffiti and I want to thank Holly Walker for the work that she did in that area. It is a definition that essentially picks up the definition consistent with the Summary Offences Act 1981. Another amendment requires a council to state on the graffiti removal notice the power relied on so that people know which section of the legislation is being used and requires the person removing the graffiti to take a copy of that notice and also to have adequate identification with them when they are removing the graffiti. On the vast majority of occasions—the way that this works in the Hutt—it is a contractor who is doing that work and it is not seen as a problem for all of those staff to carry identification because my understanding is that they do anyway. 
Probably the biggest change that the select committee made was that in the bill as introduced there was a protection from civil liability from civil proceedings arising out of actions conducted in good faith even if there was not reasonable care. That has been removed and the select committee decided that it was appropriate to rely on the general provisions of the law but also acted on the briefings of the council that it is its requirement on its contractors to carry public liability insurance. That public liability insurance is already being carried so there is not an additional cost as a result of this change. What it does is put people who are implementing this new legislation on the same basis as other people who are doing graffiti removal whether or not they are council employees or contractors as are used in the Hutt. 
I would like to finish where I started and that is to congratulate the Hutt City Mayor Ray Wallace on this initiative and to say that I am proud to be the local member for Lower Hutt and I want to thank the select committee and the House for their good work on this bill.