Cosgrove Clayton: Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill — In Committee 
Cosgrove Clayton: Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:646;Page:15331] 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Minister of Immigration) 
: 
 I will just take a short call. I was not intending to but I feel it is appropriate to address something that Mr Sharples said towards the conclusion of his speech. I do not think that he or his colleague Te Ururoa Flavell who has just spoken once mentioned the victim of this sort of insidious offence; the victim in these debates always gets sort of lost in a bunch of rhetoric. We do forget about the victim—the person who has been dealt to. 
But Dr Sharples made an interesting comment. He said there is no cost to the individual. I think Mr Sharples would acknowledge he said that. He said that the cost when people’s property is tagged or graffitied is a sort of esoteric mystical community cost. Well I invite him to have a think about that statement because I suspect that every electorate MP and the other MPs in the Chamber who have had constituents who have been graffitied would understand that there is not only a monetary cost—the cost of the clean up—but there is an emotional cost to graffiti. There is also the problem of property value cost in many parts of the country such as what happened in Hampshire Street a decade ago as mentioned by Mr Mark. A suburb or a particular part of a community becomes a magnet for this sort of stuff and that becomes an issue of property value cost. But to stand up in the Chamber and say there is no cost to an individual—that the cost of graffiti is somehow an esoteric community cost—is something I reject. 
I also reject the idea that when anybody does this offence it is the community’s responsibility. Well the community has not done this; individuals have perpetrated these offences and there is a huge cost to individuals in terms of property and emotion. And I suppose there is an intangible cost to the community. I invite Dr Sharples to reflect on that because in my part of the world in Waimakariri the taggers have even gone the next step now along with spray-cans of getting out the glass cutters. They etch graffiti into shop-front windows and then the insurance companies after repeated claims to replace the windows start to turn around and say: “Sorry there is nothing structurally wrong with the glass. It’s just been scratched or etched and therefore the policy does not cover it and we’re not paying.” 
So I invite Mr Sharples as I conclude to reflect on his statement. It is all very well to get up and use all the rhetoric and to say there is no cost and it is all the community’s problem and not to mention the victim once but I invite him to go and visit a constituent in an ordinary home in any part of New Zealand that has been dealt to with this. There may not have been any violence; it is a crime of vandalism often. But he should put to that person the notion that there is no cost for the person. I invite him to reflect on that. 
I conclude by congratulating Mr Hawkins who in his way along with the Government’s legislation is attempting to address the facts that there are victims out there that it does impact on them that there is a huge cost emotionally and financially and that he intends to do and has done—along with the Government’s bill—something to correct that. It may not solve every problem. It may not stop every young hoon from graffitiing somebody’s property but I invite Dr Sharples to reflect on the alternative: do we simply raise the white flag and say that we will do nothing about it because it will not stop everyone? Do we raise the white flag surrender and say: “Well everybody is doing it therefore we may not be able to stop at 100 percent and therefore we shouldn’t do anything about it.”? 
Dr Sharples’ colleague who has just spoken—who made I think a good contribution—said we should get on to it before it starts. He used some very eloquent phrases but did not actually propose what they meant in reality. He talked about the relationships of young people with the police as being negative. I invite him to think about and contemplate on the relationships of young people with the victims or the victim’s relationship with his or her community after having been impacted on by this. Does anybody remember as I conclude the victim in this debate? I invite those members to reflect on that issue when they talk very eloquently about young people and the perpetrators of these offences. There is a cost; it is being addressed through this legislation and that of the Government.