Hawkins George: Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill — Third Reading 
Hawkins George: Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:646;Page:15737] 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Labour—Manurewa) 
: 
 I move  
That the Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill be now read a third time 
. This bill has been around this Parliament for some little while. Of course it has taken some time for people to realise the anger and the frustration that the people of Manukau have felt over the years. 
I thank all those members of the House who have supported this bill all the way through. I thank my colleague Ross Robertson. I thank William Sio Pita Paraone from New Zealand First Phillip Field and Judith Collins who has been very helpful in making sure that this bill goes through. Pansy Wong has also helped and the former Mayor of Wellington has come to the aid of the people of Manukau. In this Parliament we quite often fight and scrap. We mock people who sing and we mock people who are sung about. But with regard to this particular bit of legislation it is really refreshing to see that people can come and work together for one community. 
I thank some people from outside this Parliament for their work in getting this bill to its third reading. I thank Sir Barry Curtis the former Mayor of Manukau City who has been absolutely strong and steadfast in his determination to make sure that the community of Manukau has some teeth with which to fight back. I thank one of the new councillors Daniel Newman. When he was the chair of the community board he made submissions on this bill and he will be absolutely delighted that it is going through. I also thank the Rev. Mark Beale. What a wonderful person Mark Beale is! He heads the Manukau Beautification Charitable Trust where people go to get rid of some of the 300000 tags that Manukau City has each year. He is involved in voluntary work. He gets people working together and I have to say thank you to him. 
It is rather interesting that the recommendation of the Local Government and Environment Committee was that this bill should go down the toilet. Well it ain’t going down the toilet; it will pass into law. It is interesting though how this issue affects people. I woke up this morning read the  
Dominion Post 
 and saw that a judge was supporting people in their community to deal with vandalism. This is what this legislation really is. I feel ashamed in some ways that there are people who think that graffiti art on someone’s fence or house is art. Well it is not. I have to say that of all the Manukau members of Parliament I can recall only one—Dr Sharples—has been against this bill passing. I believe that he sincerely believes there are other ways of dealing with this; it is just that we have not heard about them yet. 
I got a letter today. It is from a non-governmental organisation and I will not name the organisation as people will hear when I read from the letter. But it says this in part about a break-in to its premises: “The break-in and vandalism of our premises resulted in graffiti being sprayed all over our walls the carpet and furniture being covered in paint and files documents and equipment being destroyed. The hard drive in the front office had paint poured in it. Some of the files had been urinated on and had faeces on them. It appears to us this was a mindless rage attack as the only things stolen were two small radio cassette players used by our youth for recording work. At this time the repairs painting and replacement is estimated to be in vicinity of $15000. The vandalism was carried out from the harassment which took place 12 days prior to when our gate padlocks were filled with glue on six occasions resulting in us having to call locksmiths with bolt cutters to enable the padlock to be removed.” That is from a non-governmental organisation in my electorate—people who are trying to help other people facing difficulty in their lives who all of a sudden have turned back on them. That is why people feel so annoyed about graffiti. That is why people get so very very angry. We know—tragically—that a young person was killed when he was out graffitiing one night. That is really very sad and no one in this House I think would believe that anyone should lose their life in that way. 
I want to quote something from the report of the Local Government and Environment Committee that I think is very important: “We believe that one way of addressing the promoter’s concerns about the supply of graffiti implements would be to promote a voluntary memorandum of understanding between the Council and retailers regarding the display and storage of spray paints and possibly restrictions on the sale of these items to persons under 16. The possible advantage of the responsible retailing method over a mandatory lock-up approach is that it provides more flexibility to act appropriately to the particular circumstances of the retailer.” I can say that this Parliament has gone on quite a long way from there and I think it is very important that we have gone a long way and changed the way we see this issue. 
Although graffiti is fairly commonplace in Manukau City occasionally I see people who come to me and say “I’ve had my place invaded. People have sprayed over the bricks of my house. They have sprayed over the doors. They have bent over my letterbox and broken it.” Quite often those people are on fixed incomes. They do not have a huge amount of money to get things painted out or to get people to come and remove the graffiti. Those people are very very angry. But tomorrow when they know that this Parliament is doing something about it they will be pleased. This bill will affect only Manukau City. A Government bill is on the way that will have nationwide implications but in Manukau people are looking at Manukau. They are looking at what is on their neighbour’s fence and at what is on their fence and they want something done. 
I will spend the last part of my speech once again thanking all those in this Parliament who have moved so far to help Manukau City—its citizens its ratepayers those people who pay rent and those people who have suffered so much. I also thank once again all those people who have helped to clean up the graffiti—volunteers church groups and ordinary people in the community. Manukau is a wonderful community. Some people may think that because it is South Auckland it is not good but by golly I say that the spirit of the people of Manukau is supreme. They have waited a long time. They will be breaking the bottle tops off their milk and celebrating tomorrow.