Hawkins George: Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill — In Committee 
Hawkins George: Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:645;Page:14892] 
Hon GEORGE HAWKINS (Labour—Manurewa) 
: 
 First of all I acknowledge the work Sir Barry Curtis has done on this. Sir Barry worked extremely hard to try to get some control on graffiti in the city of Manukau where there are over 300000 tags a year. That is a huge amount. I have to acknowledge Sir Barry and also the councillors in Manukau—in particular Daniel Newman who has worked closely with me on this. I acknowledge my colleague Ross Robertson for all the hard work he has been doing. It is also true that all the members of Parliament from Manukau I think without exception have supported this bill and their council. This is a cry from the Manukau City Council for some help. I also acknowledge people like the Reverend Mark Beale who worked very hard with the Manukau Beautification Charitable Trust. 
 I must say though that I was surprised to read on the front page of the  
Dominion Post  
today about Mayor Kerry Prendergast of Wellington doing a moan about moves to actually help the graffiti problem. She did not come up with one suggestion—not one suggestion—and I would have thought that she would have. The former mayor of Wellington has been very supportive of this bill and I think it is interesting that the mood has changed. 
A young tagger was killed in Manurewa and the mood changed. People are looking to this Parliament for some moves. Obviously everyone knows that the Government has its own bill at the select committee but I do not want to get into that too much other than to say that Manukau City as a council has asked that this bill be passed as quickly as possible. There are amendments and I am making some amendments so that when the bill is passed its wording will be more in line with the Government bill. Of course it will also give shopkeepers time to get their spray-paint under lock and key. 
Manukau is spending a million dollars a year—a million dollars of ratepayers’ money a year—on getting rid of graffiti. The Mayor Len Brown wrote to us on 4 February and said he believes that the enactment of this Manukau bill will provide an interim solution until the Government bill is passed. I think that is very important. It also means that the Government I am sure will make sure that its bill is dealt with speedily. 
How people react to graffiti is interesting. Some people see it as art; I do not. I have been an art teacher and head of an art department in a secondary school but I have to say I do not believe that people using someone else’s property for their canvases has anything to do with art at all. It is young people rebelling against society and of course the Manukau bill does not have answers for that. People get to the stage where they are so frustrated that they just want to have some power to do things and I think that that is where Manukau is at the moment. 
My colleagues Ross Robertson and Judith Collins have both been very supportive of the council over this bill progressing. In relation to the last bill we saw how an Opposition can draw things out for quite some time—by even talking about their mothers those members can take up time. But in reality I hope that all people in this Parliament will work quickly to help this bill progress because it is a cry from Manukau City to do something. I think we need to do more of course. We have to look at the causes of tagging and why young people are out on the streets of Manukau at 2 and 3 in the morning spraying paint on someone’s fence on his or her house and on other buildings. I believe we have to act fast.