King Annette: Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
King Annette: Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 19 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5392. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai) 
: 
 It has been a pleasure to work on this local bill the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill brought to this House by my friend and colleague Trevor Mallard who worked incredibly hard on this bill along with the Mayor of Lower Hutt City Ray Wallace. In fact Mayor Wallace campaigned for this bill before he was elected as mayor. He at that time declared war on graffiti and used it very much as part of his mayoral campaign and he was determined to deliver on the promises that he made. I think it is true to say that this campaign struck a chord with many of the ratepayers out in the Hutt Valley. 
You see we are not talking about graffiti art. There is a difference between graffiti and graffiti art and I have to say I learnt a little bit about this from my friend and former colleague Stevie Chadwick. You see Stevie Chadwick’s nephew is Otis Frizzell and Otis Frizzell is now a famous graffiti artist. In fact I read some of the stuff that he has written about it and he says that graffiti art is basically the visual representation of hip hop. Well I do not claim to understand either graffiti art or hip hop but I do know it is a genre that is admired and sought after in the art world. So we are not talking about some of the amazing murals that have been painted around Wellington by young people in a graffiti art style. No we are talking in this bill about unwanted ugly scrawl painted by unthinking uncaring selfish louts who have no hesitation in defacing people’s property for no reason. 
I have to say that I do not know whether it has occurred on your property Mr Speaker but it drives people mad. They become incredibly angry when they get up in the morning and they go out and find that their beautifully painted garage door has now got something that is incomprehensible scrawled all over it. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Sometimes it’s comprehensible. 
Hon ANNETTE KING 
: Well yes sometimes it is comprehensible and cannot be repeated in this House. This happened just as you heard from the previous speaker Nicky Wagner on my garage not very long ago. The annoying thing is that you have got to go out and buy a pot of paint if you have not had your garage painted for a while. You have got to take time to clean it up. It is an intrusion and it is an invasion of your personal space. It is unsightly and I have to say I can find no redeeming features of this sort of graffiti. People actually hate it. 
People particularly hate graffiti that remains in the same place and is not removed in a timely fashion. If you are driving around to the airport and you get opposite Kilbirnie Park and see a building on the corner there have a look at the graffiti. It will be cleaned off then graffiti will go up. If it is not removed within a few days it has numerous tags all over it. It is unsightly and makes the people in that area of my electorate feel very unsafe. It does attract other graffiti which is why councils in particular want to clean it up as fast as possible. They do not want it remaining. Of course the graffiti writer wants as many people as possible to see it. The opposite is true for those who have had their property covered in graffiti and for councils. 
So this bill is about empowering Hutt City Council 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 consent. It is not about forcing this on owners; actually if an owner declines it will not be removed. But it does give the council the opportunity using an established process to remove graffiti on private property. It is easy for a council to go along and remove graffiti from public property and they do that incredibly well. We heard from people from Hutt City that they feel that they have faced a lot of tagging in their area. They believe that they are probably one of the most tagged places in New Zealand and so they want to see it removed as fast as possible. They want it removed off public property but they also want it removed off private property. So what Trevor Mallard’s bill does is set out a process for doing this. 
As you heard from the chair of our Local Government and Environment Committee we had a very small number of submissions. In fact there were only seven submissions on this bill but they were very useful submissions indeed. From them came some useful suggestions including clarifying the purpose statement to make it clear that it is about the removal of graffiti that is on private property and it must be visible from a public place. So if there is graffiti that is at the back of a property inside a porch or whatever and cannot be seen that is not what they are talking about. They are talking about graffiti that is visible in a public place. 
The second amendment was about requiring the council to state on its graffiti removal notice the source of the power it was relying upon. Of course the source of the power they are relying on is this bill when it is passed. It also requires council workers when cleaning up graffiti to be easily identified as to who they are and what they are doing because people do get very worried if they see people wandering on to their property with a paintbrush and a can of paint. They probably think that they are facing another round of graffiti so council workers need to ensure that they are easily identified when they are cleaning up graffiti. 
The minor amendments that the committee made have I think improved this bill and we end up with a bill that I now know that quite a number of councils around New Zealand are very interested in emulating. They would like to have this tool in their tool box for the cleaning up of graffiti on private property. I notice that the Mayor of Wellington only a week or so ago said how much she would like to have a similar bill. It was interesting that her officials then went on to say: “Oh yes but we’d have to estimate the cost.” Well that is true we must always know the cost of things but if we do not clean up graffiti in a timely manner there is a cost to that community. There is a cost to the feeling of security within that community and there is a cost to the look of that community and to the individual and their personal property in the devaluing of that property. So yes we need to be mindful of cost but we also need to ensure that we can do whatever is possible to make the environment that people live in pleasant and safe. We all know that graffiti can ensure people feel unsafe within their communities. 
I want to commend Trevor Mallard and the Hutt City Council in particular Ray Wallace for bringing this bill to the House. Is it not lovely that we are discussing this bill in an adult manner on Women’s Suffrage Day? Would it not be nice if many more of our debates could be so civilised rather than some of the ranting and raving that we heard from people like Simon Bridges and Judith Collins today? It is nice to be able to say that here is an agreed piece of legislation that we want to see go through the House. I certainly along with the Labour Party support this bill.