Sharples Pita: Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill — In Committee 
Sharples Pita: Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:646;Page:15324] 
Dr PITA SHARPLES (Co-Leader—Maori Party) 
: 
 It is good to see that some people believe in the myths and stories that get published on the front page of the  
Dominion Post 
. I get accused of kidnapping and I get my face on the front page—there I am in bed sleeping and I find out the next day that I am a kidnapper. But never mind. 
I would like to explain why the Maori Party opposes the Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) Bill. We oppose the bill mainly because of the reference to giving the police extra powers. I do not believe that is necessary. I believe that the police have all the powers they need to carry out their duties at this time. I feel that we always come down heavy on the youth. When there are problems we attack the youth instead of looking at the major problems in our society. We build big communities that are poor. We do not put in the resources. The teachers drive in teach and drive home again. There is no community spirit as there is in the country towns that are thriving. The people meet together and they are all joined up somehow or other. But in those large communities most of the people who provide the services drive in and drive out again and it makes it very hard to have a good community spirit. The lack of resources the lack of industry the lack of transport facilities the lack of after-school activities and the lack of user-friendly clubs mean that it is a struggle for the local people in some of our communities to carry out their roles and get full support. We do our best. 
It is really interesting. Everyone watches the Warriors—though not last week of course. They watch the Pacific Islanders excelling in rugby league and in the All Blacks and all the other teams and they feel really proud yet they look upon their very children as people who need to be policed chased and harassed in the community for their misbehaviour. We have a lot of things to look at in our communities and I believe that tightening up every time something goes wrong is not the right answer. We have just let the situation get out of hand. There are the “quick rich” in our cities now. If we look at the board of governors at places like King’s College we see that in the old days the people on the board used to be the old families and 50 percent rural people. Now it is all the “quick rich” from in town. That is the sort of thing that is happening. The people who are asking for favours now are the people who had the best advantages when they were young and they are the old people now. They got cheap loans. They could buy houses and sections for $9000. They had a free education—in fact they got paid to go to university—and they are the people that many of our politicians are pandering to and looking after instead of dealing with the community as a whole and building up a strong foundation for our youth. 
I feel a bit sad that a lot of the bills we have had in the last year have been about punishment. Now I hear that the Sensible Sentencing Trust wants to tie people to chains and let them hammer away at the side of a road and put them in tent villages. That policy started in the United States. It failed. They have the worst incarceration rate. In fact they lead the world in incarceration and it is interesting that it is the black people the coloured people who are most representative of the people in prison. We have to rethink how we look at a society’s communities. If we take a freezing works out of a town it takes years for that town to build up again. We have to reinvest in rural towns and build up their structures in order to give the communities a life. I hate graffiti—even on my own face. I hate it on walls and fences of any kind especially tagging which is the worst kind of graffiti. But I do not see it as the greatest sin in the world and that we need to have an Act of Parliament to deal with it. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Do you know how much it costs to clean it up? 
Dr PITA SHARPLES 
: There he goes. He is measuring everything by cost again. What about the cost to the community? 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: What if it happened at your place? 
Dr PITA SHARPLES 
: No the cost is the community cost. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: No it’s not. 
Dr PITA SHARPLES 
: Totally. The community has to live and some places cannot afford all the flash benefits we give out here like the Working for Families package and KiwiSaver. They cannot afford the measures that would give them a better quality of life. Those are the communities I am talking about and a lot of their children are doing this. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: This is Dreamtime. 
Dr PITA SHARPLES 
: Not at all.