Mackey Moana: Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Mackey Moana: Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 19 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5405. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 As a member of the Local Government and Environment Committee that considered this bill the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill I am very happy to take a call and congratulate my colleague the Hon Trevor Mallard on shepherding this piece of legislation through the House. He worked very hard in the select committee as the conduit between our committee and the Hutt City Council to ensure that the changes that we were considering were deemed to be both acceptable and effective by the Hutt City Council. I think we have ended up with a piece of legislation that is not only workable but will be very effective in the Hutt City Council’s fight to eradicate graffiti in its area. 
The issue of graffiti and tagging has been a major issue in Lower Hutt going back many many many years. This is not a new issue. This is not something the council has only just decided to try to address—although I do note that Mayor Ray Wallace did make a plank of his election campaign a war on graffiti. Unfortunately Lower Hutt is one of the worst areas in the country for tagging and for graffiti and given that it is actually such a lovely part of the Wellington district anything that serves to better the image of that community—throughout the rest of Wellington and the country—is indeed welcome. 
 Before I came into Parliament I was a member of the Petone Community Board in Lower Hutt. Graffiti was one of the main issues that people brought to us as a community board. Along with the protection of heritage buildings one of the biggest issues that our community faced was the issue of tagging and graffiti. People would come to our community board meetings when for example there was a public building or a private residence that was significantly damaged significantly graffitied and say that they could not understand why nothing was being done about it. When they came to us we would liaise with council officers. 
What we often found were the very problems that have led to this piece of legislation which are that often the people who owned the buildings were absentees; they were not there. Often they had not been paying rates so it was clear that they had basically just departed from the district and really had no more interest in the upkeep of that building. In the case of private buildings sometimes they were dealing with tenants who were not able to either fix it themselves—did not have the financial means—or felt that under the law under residential tenancy legislation it should be the landlord’s responsibility to do that work. 
Whereas the council could often get the approval of the tenants getting the approval of the landlords who actually owned the property was sometimes very very difficult to do. We often ended up in the situation of having to say to them that we did not have the right to just walk on to someone’s property and make alterations; we could not find the people who own the building we could not find the people who lease the building and therefore our hands were really tied. That obviously does not go down particularly well with the members of the community who pay rates and who feel very proud of their community and who get very disturbed and upset when they see buildings being defaced in the way that unfortunately they have been throughout Lower Hutt and in fact throughout the country. 
I think the comment that this is perhaps something that could be picked up by other councils is very pertinent. But as a member of the Local Government and Environment Committee which has an enormous amount of legislation before it we would probably rather see one Government bill than 60 different local government bills coming to our committee on this issue. So maybe it is something that the Government could pick up to see whether or not there is a need and a demand for it throughout the rest of the country. As I said our committee has done the work on it. Trevor Mallard has done the work on it. Certainly the Hutt City Council and the issues historically that it has been facing with tagging and graffiti provided a very good basis for developing this legislation. I think it will be very easy to pick it up and roll it out throughout the rest of the country. 
There are many reasons why this is an important issue. It might not seem like a big issue to some people but serious issues of tagging and graffiti do affect property values for those people who live in the community around them. If someone sees an area where there is an enormous amount of tagging where there may be a row of buildings owned by someone who is not present in the district and is not contactable it can send a message out about that community that is very negative which may affect the property values of other people around them even if in fact that negative perception is not true. And so in terms of the rights of other property owners in that area this is a very important piece of legislation for them. 
But I think one of the biggest reasons why this is important is that the quick removal of tagging in particular but graffiti in general provides a strong disincentive against doing it again. What we know is that the longer it is left there the longer the taggers—the people who are doing the graffiti—can get the satisfaction of seeing it and the more likely they are to try to do it again or get the message that if they do it it is something that is going to be there long term; that no one is going to do anything about it and they can brag about it. The quicker you get rid of it and make it clear that as soon as it goes up it is coming down then the quicker they will lose interest in going to those buildings and carrying out this particular destructive activity. 
I want to note that the Hutt City Council has been dealing with this for a long time. It has a graffiti eradication officer. The council has been spending up to half a million dollars a year on graffiti removal in its community. The council through its graffiti eradication officer has been working with the community. So this is not simply just an approach of “This is the only thing we are going to do and the minute it goes up we are going to take it down.” The council has been engaging with the community and trying to address the underlying issues in those communities that lead to this antisocial behaviour that lead to this destructive behaviour. That is a very important part of the equation because times are very tough. 
Unfortunately when times get really tough often we see an increase in these levels of antisocial behaviour. I would hate to see this bill not being seen in the context of the very difficult economic times in which we find ourselves. Putting it back on the Government members a number of whom have made very positive comments about this piece of legislation we certainly welcome their support for it but I just say to them to not ever forget that the Government has a role in ensuring that we can have the kind of economy and the kind of community that does not lead to vast increases in antisocial behaviour because of economic hardship. Certainly I know that around the country we have seen increases in antisocial behaviour. Do not take it out of context. Do not think that this bill is fixing it. This is actually a much much bigger problem. 
Sometimes I think we can get ourselves into this little bubble of this piece of legislation and lose sight of the big picture which is that we need to deal with the core causes of antisocial behaviour of this kind of destructive behaviour by young people who feel so disconnected from their community that they can just go out and deface it. That is a worrying trend that you see. It is easy to just write them off and call them names and do this and that and the other thing. But let us not be that glib about it is all that I would say. 
I think you have only to look around the world at some of the antisocial behaviour that is coming out of communities and in particular by young people to see that there is something there that needs to be addressed. You never excuse the behaviour but it is important to try to understand it and see if there is something far more serious lying at the base of it. 
The select committee made a number of important changes to the legislation. One was actually to include a definition of “graffiti”. I think again it is important to put that in context. The Hutt City Council made it quite clear to us that there was not a lot of grey area in terms of the buildings that it was talking about. There were concerns and I think we addressed them at the select committee around the definition of graffiti about where you get that line between graffiti and art. 
What the council said to us was that it was not dealing with any cases where it thought anyone would seriously think that it was art; it was dealing with cases where it was clearly tagging where it was clearly meant to offend it was clearly meant to damage and it was pretty cut and dried. But yes having a definition in the bill would mean that if it ever did come up with a case from time to time where there might be that line then it had no problem with that safety net if you like being put in the legislation. 
I think in terms of what the Hutt City Council are dealing with and for people who might be listening to this debate and worrying that we are going to be starting to get into that area where the lines are blurred we are not. What they are trying to deal with in the Hutt City is clearly graffiti. It is clearly meant to offend. This legislation will give the council the ability to deal with that. 
We also made it very clear that this is graffiti in public sight. In terms of extending the powers of the council to go on to private property it is where the graffiti is visible from a public point of view. So if it is right around the back of a house the council would not have the right to go around there. There were some people who thought the council should have the right to go all the way around and remove graffiti if it was offensive and if it was meant just to deface. But we were very clear. This is where it is viewed from a public viewpoint. We were very clear that this is not about graffiti art even though the council was telling us that that is absolutely not a problem. 
I want to commend the Hutt City Council. It has done an awful lot of work. It has done an awful lot of work with utility providers because power poles and power boxes are a target for taggers. I just want to acknowledge the huge amount of work that the council has put in to try to address the problem without having to come to Parliament to ask for legislation. It has done amazing work. We find ourselves along with the council saying that it just needs this bit of legislation for us to get it over the line so that we really can declare the war on graffiti that Mayor Wallace said that he was going to do when he was elected.