Goff Phil: Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Goff Phil: Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:645;Page:14483] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Minister of Corrections) 
: 
 When Simon Power was first elected to Parliament I thought he was a young man with a lot of promise. It is sad that that promise has never been fulfilled and I think the reason for that is Simon Power does not do his homework. 
I will pick up on a couple of the points he made. He said there was a promise made in the 1999 manifesto about restorative justice and cleaning up vandalism and graffiti. If he had done his homework then he would know that restorative justice is a sentence used by the Youth Court and used under the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act and that right now there are young people under instructions from those two jurisdictions who are required to do that. What we would like to do—and the resourcing in this bill and the expansion of this legislation does—is to make that a more common penalty. 
Secondly Mr Power questioned why the select committee did not support Mr Hawkins’ bill going forward. The bill of course was not thrown out as he suggested; it is on the Order Paper. I say to Simon Power that he should look at the Order Paper. He said it was thrown out. Why did the select committee decide that that bill should not go forward? I know Manukau City well. The Manukau bill would have stopped the sale of spray-cans in Manukau City. But anybody who knows South Auckland knows that people from Manurewa would go a kilometre down the road to Papakura to buy spray-cans or if they lived on the other side in Mangere that they would go half a kilometre to Otahuhu to buy spray-cans. 
The obvious point made not only by the select committee but also I think by Local Government New Zealand is that if we are to have a bill like that then it is not a local bill but a national bill and we would need to cover the whole country for it to be effective. That is why the Manukau City Council bill as well intended as it was would never be an answer. I say to Mr Power that that is obvious to somebody of the lowest intelligence so why is he pretending it is not obvious to him? I am not suggesting that the member comes into the category of people of the lowest intelligence but I ask why he is suggesting that he does not know why the Manukau bill could not proceed. The member does know; he is being disingenuous with the House. 
Then Mr Power talked about the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and inconsistencies. Well maybe Mr Power should have said whether he supports—as the Manukau bill does—a stronger law on police interrogation of somebody suspected of tagging than the law provides for somebody suspected of murder or rape. I ask Mr Power whether that was a good idea. I do not think he would have supported that being in the bill at all. Or would he have supported the fact that if he was going down the road with a felt-tip pen in his pocket he could have been picked up under one of the provisions in that bill for carrying a graffiti instrument? Mr Power would not have supported that and he knows it; once again he is being disingenuous with the House. 
Then he said that the penalty for graffiti has not gone up at all. Well under the Summary Offences Act the penalty of defacing which is where many of the charges were brought for graffiti was $200. That has been increased tenfold to $2000. I support that and not because I think that many of the kids out there doing graffiti will have $2000 to pay; I support it symbolically because it shows how seriously we take this offending. Where there are people who can afford to pay then they should have to pay through fine or reparation for the damage they have done. I speak on behalf of the overwhelming majority of the people in my electorate—and I know in your electorate Mr Assistant Speaker—who quite simply have had a gutsful of the mindless vandalism that graffiti reflects. I join the Minister of Justice in saying that graffiti is not art. It can be but what we see all around the streets is not. It can be but the stuff that is up there at the moment is not. 
There is no silver bullet answer. That is the next thing I need to say. The problem needs to be addressed by a combination of measures—strong enforcement of the law will be required intelligent policing is necessary and effective sanctions are important. Changing the attitudes of the kids out there doing this makes sense as well because we need to address the problem at its cause. We need to look also at rapid removal of tagging. Many local government authorities are doing that. We need to look at environmental design in order to make it harder to tag and we need to look at creative alternatives for some of the offenders. I know that Christchurch has a very good scheme and I have seen a very good scheme operating in Avondale. That is not the whole answer but it is part of the answer. All of those things need to be in the mix if we really want to make a difference. 
I have to say a heck of a lot is happening already. Nobody in this House should pretend that there is no response to graffiti at the moment. A lot is being done at a local level by police and others. But this legislation backed by the STOP strategy with its extra funding—$15 million extra over 5 years—will really help. 
In terms of prevention I think there is a case for banning sales to under-18-year-olds. I do not think it is the entire answer. Yes of course they can still get access to cans in some other way just as young people can access tobacco and alcohol but that is not a reason for not banning sales. We should make it harder for those of the age category of the bulk of the offenders to get access to the cans. One of the other ways we can do that is by requiring retailers to secure the cans. A lot of these kids do not have any money; they get the cans by stealing them. Already the retailers that are following best practice are securing the cans. This bill requires that it be done across the board. I hope everybody will support that. 
In terms of penalties I have talked about fines but I really want to talk about the specific community work schemes that require taggers to clean up their own work. I think that is really important. Those kids who think it is really cool to go out there under the cover of darkness and deface public commercial and private property may take a different view of their actions when in the full light of day in public and in front of others they have to get out there as part of the sentence and clean up the damage they have done. They will not think it is quite so cool when their mates see them having to do that in public. I think that is a great case of the penalty matching the crime. 
The last—but not necessarily the least important; I would say it is perhaps the most important—question is the question of enforcement of the law. This is where I congratulate my colleague Annette King who as Minister of Justice brings in this bill but who also as Minister of Police and working with the Labour-led Government with the support of New Zealand First is putting 1250 extra police staff in the police force in this term of Government. Of those police officers 250 will be community police and will play a critical role. 
I will give the House an example of what is happening in my electorate with Constable Reg Alofa. Reg works out of Avondale. He is a graffiti enforcement officer. He has had that responsibility for 10 months and in those 10 months has made 200 arrests for tagging and wilful damage. The other thing I like about what Reg is doing is that he has a mate called David Tua. Some people know him as “Tua Man”. David goes into some of the local schools with Reg and says to the kids—particularly the Pasifika kids—that it is not on to damage other people’s property. When he says that I have to say that it has a little bit more influence than when I say it or Mrs King says it or Ron Mark says it. I patted David Tua on the shoulder at the launch of the graffiti initiative and it was like hitting a solid rock. If David says “Don’t tag!” people would be pretty silly to actually go out there and do it. 
Another person I want to pay credit to is Rob Shields who works for the Auckland City Council in my area. He has built up a huge data bank of taggers. He works closely with the police. We have intelligence-led policing. That is why we are being successful. That will make a difference. 
Finally I congratulate the Manukau City Council which I know has worked really hard in this area; Barry Curtis the former mayor; and Len Brown the current mayor. I congratulate George Hawkins. I tell Mr Power that George and I have actually worked in this area for quite a long time now. I think George has worked really hard on behalf of his community and they are pleased at the difference he has made. Last—and again not least—I thank Annette King as the Minister of Justice for bringing this bill into the House. I think it is a very good bill and I commend it to the House.