King Annette: Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill — First Reading 
King Annette: Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:677;Page:726] 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Labour—Rongotai) 
: 
 I rise to support the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill put forward by my very good colleague Trevor Mallard. Today I went to the reaccreditation of Wellington City as an International Safe Community. Our city was first designated as a safe community in 2006 and we became the 100th International Safe Community in the world. It required six criteria to be met for us to become designated such a city by the World Health Organization and each of these criteria has a number of work streams. The reason why I have raised it is that one of them is graffiti management and it is graffiti management that is seen to be part of providing a safe community. Under this international recognition a lot of work has gone into ensuring that you can eradicate graffiti because graffiti is vandalism. It is vandalism of private property; it is vandalism of public property. There is no permission for graffiti; it is illegal.  
We do know that here in the Wellington region it is costing us between $2 million and $3 million a year for graffiti. Many councils have put in place plans and programmes to clean up the public sites. I took note of what was said by the last speaker about the Hutt Valley in fact being able to speed up its clean-up of graffiti from 72 hours to 48 hours. The clean-up of graffiti is the key to eradicating it because if you can get rid of it as fast as you can then the taggers are not so keen to come back to the same place. They want to be seen; they want their so-called tag to be noticed.  
But a problem for the Hutt and one that does exist in other places but is particularly important in the Hutt is the amount of tagging that takes place on private property. I am sure there are members of this House who have had their private property tagged. I certainly have: a brand new garage door not yet painted with graffiti right across it when you get up in the morning which means you then have to set about to clean it up if you are a responsible person. Some people in private property do not mind so much. Under this bill a local authority will be able to go in and clean up graffiti off private property where it is an eyesore for the public. I think that is a very good move indeed. Nothing makes a community look worse than graffiti all over the walls of houses fences and dairies—anything that is private property—and people do not feel safe in communities where there is a lot of graffiti. So this bill does provide the ability for the council to enter private land and take any action necessary to remove graffiti on any property situated on that land.  
It is not an approach that you would call heavy-handed or jackbooted local government because there are a whole lot of measures that are put in place before in fact the graffiti can be removed. First of all there has to be 10 days’ notice. The council has to give notice to the occupier of that land it has to give it to them in writing and it has to ensure that in fact it is delivered in a number of ways. It can be delivered in person it can be delivered at the person’s last known address it can be sent by prepaid postal address it can be sent by fax and email it can be posted to a person’s post office box and so on. So every effort is made to ensure that the person who owns the private property is notified that it is going to be removed. But if that person does object then the council will not be removing the graffiti; it will remain. So for those who are worried that local government is going to storm on to private property and start interfering with people’s private property no it will not; the safeguards are in this bill.  
I think this is a local solution for a local problem but probably something that other councils will be interested in looking at because they too will have many private properties that are tagged and destroyed by the inane work of people who have got nothing better to do. Graffiti is vandalism it is illegal and I commend the member for bringing this local bill to the House.