Sage Eugenie: Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Sage Eugenie: Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 15 August 2012. Volume:682;Page:4419. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
EUGENIE SAGE (Green) 
: 
 I am very pleased to take a short call on this bill the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill. As a new member of this House it was very encouraging being in the Local Government and Environment Committee and it having such a constructive collaborative approach to the legislation. Like others I congratulate the member Trevor Mallard on bringing in this bill. 
The Hutt City Council operates a free service to remove graffiti within the Hutt and it spends over $200000 on this annually. The bill will mean that council staff or their designated contractor no longer need to get permission to go on to private land to remove graffiti that is visible from a public place. That is provided that the council has given 10 working days’ notice to the property owner or occupier that it is going to do this and provided that it has received no objection from them. If there is an objection the graffiti stays. 
The council wanted this bill because of the high levels of tagging and graffiti in the Hutt and its experience that swift removal helps avoid further tagging and helps prevent buildings from appearing neglected and then being targeted for more tagging. So it addresses the issue of absentee property owners and building and property owners who did not respond to the council’s request for permission for its graffiti contractor to remove the tags or similar graffiti. 
When I first read this bill as introduced I was concerned that it potentially gave the council excessive powers to remove political comment and graffiti art. That was because the bill had no definition of graffiti and no protection for property owners who may have allowed their fence or their blank concrete wall to be decorated with a political slogan with a political hoarding or with some form of graffiti art. Of course what may be one person’s graffiti might be someone else’s pungent political comment. The bill as introduced would have allowed an overzealous council officer or contractor to paint over whatever he or she considered to be graffiti. So it was pleasing that the select committee agreed to include the definition of graffiti from the Summary Offences Act. That Act requires of course that there be an element of damage or defacement and that the graffiti is done without the lawful authority or consent of the owner or occupier. 
There have been suggestions that this bill be applied nationally. Certainly the Green Party would obviously consider any such bill on its merits but I have some concerns there. The Hutt City Council has been very progressive on the one hand when it has been controlling and eradicating graffiti; it has also been very progressive about channelling the energy that goes into tagging and graffiti into graffiti art. As long ago as 1999 the Dowse Art Museum ran a Style Crimes exhibition of graffiti art and a festival that involved break-dancing music and the painting of a huge mural. So the council has been working hard to be very constructive in terms of the way in which youth can express themselves through graffiti art in a positive way. It is important that that is done because it is a validation and a valuing of youth culture. If we create legislation that eliminates any form of human and youth expression by labelling it “graffiti” that is not validating youth culture. So what the council has done is progressive in doing that on the one hand as well as removing graffiti. 
Another very significant change by the select committee was as the previous speaker Nikki Kaye noted the deletion of clause 8 because it protected the council and its agents from civil proceedings. The advice to the committee was that it was unclear why council employees should be given this protection when other local government staff carrying out their responsibilities under other statutes like the Local Government Act did not have a similar protection from legal action. So as long as council staff are taking reasonable care they are very unlikely to be held to be negligent. 
This is a very good bill. The Green Party is pleased to be supporting it and I commend the member for introducing it and the work of the select committee. Thank you.