Samuels Dover: Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Samuels Dover: Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:647;Page:16078] 
Hon DOVER SAMUELS (Labour) 
: 
 Te mea tuatahi maku kei te mihi atu ki a koe te Kaiwhakahaere o te Whare me koe ano hoki e te whanaunga e Hone tena koe. 
[ 
The first thing for me is to acknowledge you Madam Assistant Speaker of the House; and you also Hone the relative greetings 
.] 
I was not going to speak on this bill but I thought I would take a short call. When colleagues get up and speak they make me enthusiastic about their perceptions and certain things happen—my springboard legs automatically stand up and I take a call. 
I am interested in the people who say “Yes none of us like tagging. We have had a gutsful of it and blah blah blah.” The first thing I want to know is where this word “tagging” comes from. Somebody said that it is an interpretation of some sort of artistic talent—tagging. I looked for it in the dictionary and I certainly could not find that definition. But let me say this. In the old days if I had wandered around and did some of the things that these people—I will not say young or old—are doing defacing and destructing private property I would have got a boot straight up the backside by my old man. I would be scared as hell to come back and say to the old man: “Listen I went down the road and saw a beautiful fence and I scribbled all over it with spray paint. Come and have a look at it because I believe it is art. That is the new description for tagging.” Do members know what the old man would have done? He would have said: “Bend over. You’ll get six of the best right on the backside.” That is the answer to that one. 
I am very very interested in these guys who say that they do not want tagging but that tagging is a minor offence. Perhaps it is minor for someone whose property is not tagged. Let me say something for the old ladies or the people who own houses in Epsom and come out every morning twice a week and find that their fences have been sprayed with spray-cans in all sorts of ways. Is there any difference if the same thing happened to a marae in Rotorua or Ngaruawahia? Members should just think about it. What if our king came out one morning and found that some imbeciles—whatever they thought they were doing and whether or not it was artistic—had taken a spray-can and defaced the whole front of the marae? I would say that Hone Harawira would be the first—and I would back him up—to say that we should identify who did it and very quickly put him or her in a hangi as Shane Jones was saying. Hone Harawira would be the first one to say this. I am saying there is no difference if this happens to a marae or to anybody else’s home in this country. If somebody is going to destroy one’s private property then that person should get his or her beans big time. 
I have been listening to some of our more liberal colleagues and they have been in trouble with me. I have been upwind of the smoke sometimes. Some of them were downwind of the smoke and they got a little bit carried away in terms of their interpretation of what tagging is and about their belief that it is some sort of artistic talent. As I said Chester Borrows has been a policeman and he is too tough to think that. Most of these members of Parliament if not all of them have never come out in the morning and seen that their fences have been desecrated tagged or painted. Half of those member would not have the time to get out and clean those fences themselves; they would have to pay somebody else to do so. Could members imagine Nandor Tanczos going out with his bucket organic soap and brush and cleaning his fence? I could not imagine it. It would be something for the  
New Zealand Herald  
to take a good photo of—here is Nandor with his brush and eco-friendly toothpaste trying to clean up this tagging! Get real! 
I said I would take only a short call but this is a serious situation for many many people and a lot of them are elderly and cannot get out and clean it up. Some of them are even more frustrated because they pay somebody else to clean it and within 2 weeks they come back and see the desecration again. I support the Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill and I recommend it to the House. Kia ora tatou.