Gallagher Martin: Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill — In Committee 
Gallagher Martin: Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:646;Page:15327] 
MARTIN GALLAGHER (Labour—Hamilton West) 
: 
 I rise to take another call on the Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill. I want to acknowledge that contribution by George Hawkins and I want to acknowledge the fact that not only has he been a member of this Parliament for a number of years but he has 30 years of public service experience. He was the former mayor of Papakura and he brings a cumulative weight of knowledge and community experience to this Parliament. I know that the now former Deputy Mayor of Manukau City our good colleague Su’a William Sio who is with us tonight will support that. 
I spoke before about the former Mayor of Manukau City Barry Curtis and his very strong entreaty to us as a select committee when we went up there and his strong lobbying. I take this opportunity to acknowledge George Hawkins obviously for his work in presenting the bill with the support of Ross Robertson. But if ever a mayor has had an impact in this country and in this Parliament it is Barry Curtis; he marshalled together all of those forces to really bring this problem home to us. Certainly although it is fair to say that Hamilton does not have the degree of graffiti and tagging problem that Manukau has it still has a serious problem. In that sense I acknowledge the people who say that legislation on its own is not the magic bullet but it is part of the tool box. Its part of that tool box is obviously the community buy-in and involvement to basically clean up neighbourhoods and create a sense of community. 
I acknowledge the many good schemes in Manukau which I alluded to in a tribute I paid to the people who are out there working in the community after we have gone to bed—I talked about the Maori wardens still out at 1 o’clock in the morning and about other people who are really involved in rebuilding neighbourhoods. I also take the opportunity to acknowledge the community of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in my city who of course as part of a nationwide community day put out in Hamilton 1600-plus members of their church community. They went all throughout the city particularly in the Five Crossroads area of Hamilton East but also specifically in parts of my electorate of Hamilton West as well. I pay a huge tribute to the members of the church. The scale of their organisation was amazing but so was what they achieved with the neighbourhoods. In particular when they left the neighbourhood of Five Crossroads the place was spick and span; it was scrubbed up and it was kind of year zero—there was a sense of starting again. The community was really buying in saying it was great and that they wanted to keep it like that. There was a wonderful wonderful spirit. Now that was not legislation it was not law; that was just a community church organisation getting out there and working with the city council. That is the other dynamic. Certainly I will acknowledge that Manukau has many examples of that community spirit. The law comes in and underpins that spirit and gives a legal protection—a legal oomph—and then we put that across to the Stop Tagging Our Place strategy as well which is a multi-agency multi-range strategy that also comes into play. 
I also take the opportunity again in the context of this bill to pay tribute to people like Olly Te Ua a member of our Hamilton City Council staff and other members of the Hamilton City Council for their excellent work. We have to say that we cannot see this in some kind of social isolation. For example dare I say I think that the Government’s recent major funding boost for community-based organisations will help. The extra funding and emphasis we have put into education and into schools giving every kid the right to go to a decent neighbourhood school will help as well. The B4 School checks will help and the work we have done to have greater rights for victims of crime is also important in this regard. Dare I say even stability in terms of housing helps—and yes we have some huge challenges around housing affordability in this country. I do not want to sound partisan but that issue is not helped by the former National Government selling a whole stack of State houses during its tenure.