Kaye Nikki: Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Kaye Nikki: Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 15 August 2012. Volume:682;Page:4417. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central) 
: 
 I am pleased to speak on the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill. I want to start by acknowledging the chair of the Local Government and Environment Committee Nicky Wagner and other members but I also acknowledge the local member for Hutt South Trevor Mallard for bringing this bill to the House. It is not often that we have a collaborative approach on some of these matters and just on this local bill we have had a very very collaborative approach. 
I think at the heart of this bill are a couple of basic principles—actually some principles that are very close to the National Party’s heart—and they are safer communities but also private property rights. I just want to talk a little bit about that but I also acknowledge from the speech of Kris Faafoi a Labour member of the House that many of us have been victims of graffiti so we personally know what it is like to have your property damaged. Some of us or a lot of us have been involved in campaigns so we have mastered the art of removing moustaches and various other things from hoardings with a bit of meths and a rag. That is a very small example of how it feels to have your property damaged but I think there are many members in this House who know what it feels like to have that lack of respect and to have your property damaged. 
I think the other point that I would make is that we in this House can pass legislation that may try to rectify some of these issues but underneath it we must always remember as well that the basic principle—and we know from some of the statistics that a lot more young people are involved in graffiti—of teaching people respect and the value of other people’s property is not necessarily something that will come from legislation. It comes from families. It comes from communities. But I think that this bill will help in a couple of ways. The first thing is if we are able to remove that graffiti in a timely manner in the Hutt area then what that says to some of those young people who do it for a particular status is that we are not going to tolerate it. We also know that if that graffiti does hang around it is more likely that there will be other graffiti and that communities will be less safe. So I think it does help to be able to make communities safer and reduce crime. 
What has been great about this collaborative process in the select committee is that we have seen some very valuable amendments and I want to touch on them. One of the amendments is around the definition and I think it was Holly Walker from the Green Party who helped provide that very clear definition. The other amendment that I was very keen on was the deletion of clause 8. This originally was in the bill and we spent a reasonable amount of time on this. It provided the council with protection from civil proceedings arising out of actions that it may have had even with reasonable care. I think members really felt that this protection was not needed and that council employees should not be given greater protection than other local authority employees. I think that is a really important point because the whole way through this bill our discussion was not only how do we ensure that we can get rid of this graffiti in a timely manner—I think it costs $300000 to $500000 without this legislation for the Hutt City Council to be able to get the required consents to be able to remove that graffiti—but also how do we protect basic private property rights? I think that we saw clause 8 as being unnecessary because it did mean that local authority employees would have greater protections over other local authority employees. 
 I think the other main point that I would make is that as I have said before this legislation can do so much. Although we may have done some great things to tighten up some of the clauses there is a need to recognise that some of the young people who are engaging in graffiti are doing that for various social reasons so we on this side of the House are supporting programmes like Youth Guarantee to make sure that they are engaged in education and in work and are not necessarily out there vandalising people’s private property. 
I am not going to spend too much longer but I just want to say that I do commend the local member Trevor Mallard—I think I have said twice now—for bringing this bill to the House. I do want to say that I think all members of the Local Government and Environment Committee have engaged in a very collaborative process to deliver what is a very important bill for the Hutt and its community which involves making sure that our communities are safer and also protects some basic private property rights. I think that the member who spoke previously Andrew Williams is probably right. There will be communities around New Zealand that will be looking at this local bill and saying that they might be a little bit jealous. But I think overall it has been a very very productive worthwhile process and I want to commend this bill to the House.