Mark Ron: Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Mark Ron: Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:647;Page:16625] 
RON MARK (NZ First) 
: 
 I recognise that very often when the law is being interpreted there are those who seek to defend actions by asserting what they believe was the intent of Parliament at the time the legislation was passed. I want to take this opportunity to add to the comments from New Zealand First about community service sentencing. I want it to be absolutely clear in the minds of those people who will prosecute defend and adjudicate on the crime of graffiti vandalism exactly what was in the minds of the people who are passing this legislation through the House in respect of community service sentencing. 
There is much debate out there and there was even when submissions were being taken on this bill on what denotes community service sentencing or what community service sentences can comprise. We have in the time I have been in this House discussed a range of initiatives around the country that were implemented by police officers and were part of diversion programmes. These were sometimes later pulled to pieces by people whom I would describe as hand-wringing liberals as being offensive or humiliating for the poor souls on the receiving end. I think the power and strength of Part 1 is that we in this Parliament are making it clear that judges have the ability to give a community service sentence to these people—to take from them the time they would use to go out ironically to vandalise other people’s property by graffitiing them; to take from them the time they would use to enjoy themselves with their friends and their cobbers. New Zealand First expects judges in the enforcement of this law to give people community service sentences that are quite substantial. Where the judges think of a heavy fine we would like them to think of “heavy time”—time on the streets of the offenders’ communities cleaning up the vandalism. 
We heard from various district and city councils. Auckland is a classic example. Anyone visiting Auckland who gets into a taxi drives out of Auckland airport and heads into town is struck by the amount of graffiti. Imagine how many people hours could be involved in cleaning it up; imagine how many labour hours would be needed to fulfil the task of cleaning it up. We in New Zealand First ask the judiciary who will be applying this legislation and who will be making the decisions to please focus on the man hours to please focus on community service sentencing. We see the ideal solution as being one where all those young people—or old people if they are tagging—are out there in their pink vests being seen by the ratepayers of the area as they paint over and clean up their mess. We agree with Kate Wilkinson that this bill is not the be-all and end-all. It will not solve it all but the sight of so many people who have been caught tagging out there cleaning up the mess would be an encouragement to ratepayers and citizens. We believe that it would actually send them a message giving them confidence that things are working in their favour that the House does recognise what they are being subjected to and that the judiciary and the courts are doing something about it. 
We would despair if we saw the judiciary handing out $2000 fines. We know that they are meaningless. Boy racers take it as a badge of honour and a mark of pride if they have a glove box full of tickets and are able to tell their mates “Yeah I’ve got $30000 worth of fines racked up.” At a certain point the level of the fine is meaningless to them because they have no intention of paying it. There was an example on the West Coast about 3 years ago of three young men who had $250000 of fines remitted and written off. Well we would say what an absolute waste of time that exercise was. By how much did it undermine the justice system? They should have been given community service right at the outset that community service should have been enforced and it should have been done in such a way that it was humiliating for them in such a way that they were seen by the wider public and in such a way that they themselves decided that they never ever wanted to be put in that situation again. 
This provision is very powerful and is a very useful tool in deterring people from continuing their vandalistic behaviour. We hope to see it being used to its fullest extent. We would despair if we saw taggers being reported in the paper as owing $15000 worth of fines when actually community service was the appropriate sentence.