Williams Andrew: Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williams Andrew: Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 15 August 2012. Volume:682;Page:4416. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. I think it is a case of “three counts and you’re out”. I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on the Hutt City Council (Graffiti Removal) Bill. New Zealand First will be supporting this bill alongside the other parties. I concur with the comments made by fellow members of the Local Government and Environment Committee in respect of the good merits of this bill. Congratulations to the Hon Trevor Mallard on bringing it to the House on behalf of Hutt City Council and Mayor Ray Wallace and his team. Well done to them for putting this forward. 
I have had a little bit of involvement with graffiti during my 9 years in local government and I was informed I can recall that tagging apparently originated on the subways in New York. That was where it first became of significance—many many decades ago. It spread from there and somebody picked up— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: “Kilroy was here”. 
ANDREW WILLIAMS 
: What was that? 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: It was English. 
ANDREW WILLIAMS 
: Was it? Unfortunately with the age of television in New Zealand somebody saw what was happening in New York and it was picked up in New Zealand and it kicked off. So people— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: This was 1920s England. 
ANDREW WILLIAMS 
: Yes I know. This was New York that I was told about. It is unfortunate because as other speakers have commented communities that have high levels of graffiti tend to also go along the lines of increased crime and increased activities such as vandalism and other negative things towards a community. It is disappointing when that occurs. When you go to some countries and you see no graffiti at all it is very very welcome. It is certainly nice to go to places where there is no graffiti and some countries and some communities have been able to achieve that. 
I can recall that from the North Shore City Council’s point of view at one stage we were spending up to $600000 a year on graffiti tagging and vandalism. We managed to reduce that significantly over a period of 4 or 5 years when we dedicated a tagging team of several staff members who started mapping and profiling the taggers and building up profiles of the regular taggers. When they were able to catch them with the support of the Waitemata district police they were able to then take them to court and try to get some restitution. Taking photographs of the tags and building up a good profile of the regular offenders certainly did reduce tagging significantly. In many cases and in many cities and communities it is only a handful of people doing much of the damage and they can be prolific. They can get around significant amounts of geographic areas. It is very disturbing when one person or a handful of people can do so much damage. 
It is also very disturbing for people. I can recall one Sunday being rung by an elderly gentleman who was most disturbed that their whole cul-de-sac near their retirement village had been graffitied. It was all over the tarmac of their cul-de-sac. They felt almost invaded. They felt that they and their community had been attacked in a sense. I was very grateful to the staff at the time and to the people who did our tag removal on the North Shore. They moved in and had it removed within about 12 hours. It was all gone. They actually sandblasted the road and removed the tagging. That was a great relief to the people who felt at the time you know most threatened by this horrible tagging all over their street. 
One of the things we also did—and I know that many communities are doing this throughout New Zealand now—was make sure that access to aerosol cans and some of the various things that they use to put the graffiti on is restricted. This is a good thing. Communities most certainly must ensure that wherever possible they restrict access to particularly aerosol cans in lockable cabinets from the various DIY stores and hardware stores. Also ID should be required to purchase them when they are being sold to people of perhaps a more youthful age and those selling them can inquire as to what the real purpose of the purchase is. That is a good thing. I certainly would hope that responsible retailers throughout New Zealand will be doing that. What we certainly do not want to see is the likes of what was occurring in the past which was corner dairies and corner shops selling aerosol cans. You knew full well that the main purpose of the purchase of those cans was certainly not to go home and do their homework or decorate some form of furniture; it was to go out and tag. Therefore restricted access to aerosol cans is a good thing. 
New Zealand First does have a couple of concerns. One is that of course the lid on the budget for the police and police resources is putting more pressure on the councils and the local authorities to do the likes of this work when in fact if there were greater police resources and a bigger budget available to the police to apprehend many of the offenders perhaps the source of the problem would not be there to the same extent. Instead we have the situation where you are having to be the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff to fix the end result rather than stopping it in the first place or apprehending those in the act. We certainly—from New Zealand First’s point of view—would like to ensure that in the future there are increased resources in policing to do the likes of the mapping and the profiling and the keeping of good registers of the main tagging offenders in order to properly apprehend them take them before the courts and have them correctly dealt with by our justice system to try to get either restitution or certainly community work out of some of the offenders and actually make them remove some of the works they have been guilty of. 
There will definitely be other councils in New Zealand that will want to see this moved on throughout the country and I certainly would hope that this is the beginning of it becoming a nationwide policy and a nationwide Act in the future because it has merit. Again we seem to be getting a lot of piecemeal legislation where one community can benefit from it while another community literally over the road will not and that is a shame. In the likes of the Wellington area where there are some hot spots for graffiti this would certainly be advantageous and very helpful to them. So I would certainly hope in the future that this Government or the next Government with New Zealand First involved will take this on to more of a national basis and ensure that all communities in New Zealand can respond in the same manner. 
Just in closing I congratulate those involved with this bill. I also congratulate the members of the Local Government and Environment Committee. The bill was handled in a very collegial manner. We did work through this and all the various issues. We did cover off some of the concerns about the authorities and some of the civil rights issues that were involved. Therefore it is good legislation that we have as a result because it has been hashed around a great deal and has been fine-tuned to come up with a very good solution that was acceptable to everyone. Congratulations again to Trevor Mallard on bringing it forward. Well done. This is a good piece of legislation.