Roy Heather: Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Roy Heather: Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:645;Page:14491] 
HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I rise to speak to this first reading of the Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill. The ACT party will not be supporting this bill for a very simple reason: this legislation is not necessary. It is clearly election-year grandstanding by Labour and I am sad to see that it is supported by the National Party. 
I wonder whether any member in either of the two big parties or anybody else supporting this bill has bothered to look at the Summary Offences Act 1981 to see what the law currently is. If people have taken the opportunity to read sections 11 and 33 they will have seen that in actual fact there is no change. Section 11 of the Summary Offences Act 1981 talks about wilful damage. Subsection (1) states: “Every person is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 months or a fine not exceeding $2000 who intentionally—(a) Damages any property; or (b)”—not applicable in this case—“Sets on fire any tree or other vegetation.” 
If we move to section 33 of the same legislation as it currently exists—entitled “Billsticking defacing etc.”—we see that it reads: “Every person is liable to a fine not exceeding $200 who without the consent of the owner or occupier—(a) Affixes any placard banner poster or other material bearing any writing or pictorial representation to any structure or to or from any tree; or (b) Writes paints sprays or etches on or otherwise marks any structure.” The only change is that the legislation before the House lifts the fine for an offence created there to $2000. The new legislation in fact removes the graffiti aspect of section 33 in the current Act and introduces a new section 11A that makes it an offence to write paint spray etch or otherwise mark any structure. 
So why are we standing here in this House today for no good reason when we have economic issues to deal with—as my colleague Nandor Tanczos from the Green Party pointed out—and any number of serious issues affecting this country which are currently being ignored? For that reason I am pleased to see that the Green Party is not supporting this legislation. I understand that the Maori Party is also opposing this legislation because it is completely unnecessary. 
There are several other points that I could make around the Summary Offences (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism) Amendment Bill. I also want to spend some time talking about serious justice issues that the Government could be addressing in this time instead of this unnecessary bill. 
Why do we have a law that does not work which states that under-18-year-olds are not able to purchase alcohol? Everybody knows that it does not work. It is a farce. Here we are today putting in place the banning of spray-cans being sold to under-18-year-olds in the expectation that—like magic—that will work. Well we are not only fooling ourselves but also trying to fool every person in New Zealand and New Zealanders will not be fooled because they are not idiots. 
The second thing is the issue of fines. That is the other big part of this bill that will revolutionise what happens with tagging. Fines will move from the $200 mark to up to $2000. For selling spray-cans to under-18-year-olds there will be a fine of $1500 which I guess might have some effect. But when I look back on press releases from just before Christmas put out by the Minister of Justice Annette King I see that she talked a lot about the fact that fines did not have any impact on behaviour with reference to speeding and traffic offences. She talked about the number of young people in particular who built up fine after fine did not pay any of them because they could not afford to then—magically—further down the track had those fines completely wiped. The message that that is supposed to send to offenders is quite beyond me but everybody agrees that it is not working either. 
Today we have this legislation whereby we stand in Parliament and say what a good thing it is to be imposing fines on our young people who tag—a complete U-turn—yet by limiting the sale of spray-cans we are doing exactly the same thing that we do for alcohol. I would like somebody who supports this bill to stand up and tell me how imposing this measure on under-18-year-olds and imposing fines is going to work. It will not work. When I say these things I do not mean to suggest that we do not think tagging is a serious problem—it is. Nobody disagrees with that. But if we really want to make some impact on this problem then we need to look very carefully firstly at what causes the behaviour and secondly at what we can do about it in a positive way. 
I have quickly jotted down a few things that I think contribute to the tagging behaviour we see from some of our young people. Firstly it is often a teenage rebellion an antisocial sentiment. Frequently there is a component of gang association. It can be for some a cry for help or attention. Often it is a result of peer-group pressure. I think that movie and game media storylines and culture often contribute to these behaviours. The last thing which is a serious issue and was also noted by the Green Party speaker is truancy and poor school achievement. 
So is banning the sale of spray-cans to under-18-year-olds actually going to address any of these things? I suggest that it will not change the behaviour of a single young person. Carrots and sticks are the way that we can deal most effectively with these things. In terms of carrots particularly for our young people the Minister of Justice could have suggested—instead of putting this ridiculous bill before Parliament—supporting a wide range of youth activities and mentoring programmes. They have been shown to work—not Government-initiated ones usually but those introduced by individuals who have a passion like Project K. The Government could spend some time and effort supporting those programmes. There has been a lot of talk this year about boot camps. Some people have suggested that they are not boot camps but when we get down to it the use of badges uniforms discipline rules and codes of conduct is actually a carrot that could be used. I would be surprised if New Zealand First in particular did not agree with me on this point. 
The Government could have taken the opportunity to turn a very positive light on this whole area. Street art competitions with prizes at local regional and national levels and with automatic disqualification—this is a stick—from entry forever for those caught tagging just like we do with drug cheats at the Olympics would have been a novel idea. Junior leader programmes could have been promoted for our young people from around the age of 13 when they are very impressionable. The New Zealand Cadet Forces partially fill this role but they operate on a shoestring with cake stalls essentially funding their operations. The Government could have introduced a rejuvenated bursary scheme linked to student debt rather than something that has no hope at all of working. 
The justice system has many many problems and there are a large number of areas I could talk about this afternoon where changes could be made that would improve things for victims and for our communities and in fact offer some hope of rehabilitation for those who have committed the crimes. Rehabilitation is not possible for everybody but for a large number of people it is. One such suggestion is to have a 24/7 court system and deal with the problems as they arise instead of making people wait for days weeks months or even years sometimes to come before the courts. In some countries fines always carry alternative jail sentences: people are instructed to pay their fine at the time and if they cannot they go to jail. That sends a pretty strong message. It is not just some $2000 fine that might or might not have to be paid some time in the future. 
We could have mandatory non-association orders in the Youth Court that are enforceable by the alternative or suspended sentence given at the same time. A financial value assigned to all sentences 90 percent of which could be paid to the victim would make an impact. That would acknowledge that the victim—not the person who perpetrates the crime—is the one who suffers. The list goes on and on and the ACT party will be rolling out some of these ideas as an election approaches not making some knee-jerk reaction to a problem that the public thinks is big at the moment. 
There is no doubt that tagging is a problem but this bill will have absolutely no impact because the writing is already in the present Summary Offences Act. It is there it needs to be policed effectively and then we might see some progress on this very serious issue.