Page 2270 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 15 September 1992
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groups, who say, "The underpass has become a haven for unpleasant activities; it is dark and dank; and it is covered with offensive graffiti". Indeed, in some parts of Canberra that can be a problem with underpasses.
As a trial project, near the Fadden Primary School we have sent Public Works out to clean and strip and repaint as a bare white surface the local school underpass. Parents and students of the school have, as a community project - with some paint that I think was provided from a private sector source, which is very encouraging as a sense of community spirit - painted murals on the underpass. Although the underpass was a public engineering investment designed to make the school safer, it was seen almost as a threat to the school. We have seen that threatening environment turned into a very warm, friendly and welcoming environment through the constructive use of public art. Again, we hope that, because the school and the community were involved, nobody else will come along and put graffiti, in the sense of offensive vandalism, on what is now a very attractive community arts project.
While we encourage all that was said about community arts and community expression, and while as a community the ACT has one of the most innovative records in Australia in providing and encouraging community art and that productive form of graffiti, we are reluctant to say that graffiti is a good thing. In its bad and anti-social form it can be most destructive, it can be offensive, and it can quite simply be dangerous. In order to prevent graffiti from being put on public facilities, we sometimes have to resort to the use of chemicals to treat the walls. That is both expensive and something that one prefers not to do, because we always want to be cautious about what we spend. As one example, the cost of removing graffiti from an underpass in the Canberra region was something like $10,000 to clean up a public facility. While we support and encourage community art and the creative use by young people of their talents on public facilities in a directed way - I will not say a controlled way - we obviously cannot support or encourage graffiti as vandalism.
What we have been doing in this community is taking the balanced approach. We are seen as leaders. Certainly, the success of the bus-shelter competition in Canberra is something other public transport systems are interested in. I think we have got it about right. We do need to be cautious about sending a message that we as an Assembly are generally in favour of graffiti. That is clearly not the case. It is not what Ms Szuty meant. I am sure that Ms Szuty was not saying that we should encourage people to go out and deface assets. What she was saying was that, properly channelled, that creative energy can be a good thing. We would agree with that and we would say that we are doing that, and that the motion suggesting that we need to put up boards or whatever is unnecessary.
MR HUMPHRIES (4.06): Mr Deputy Speaker, first of all, let me say that, if I suggested in an interjection earlier today that I might have been responsible for some graffiti when I was at university, I would not like that to stand on the record. I might have been the subject of some graffiti remarks at university, but I certainly was not responsible for any - at least, not directly.
I think the Attorney and I are in almost total agreement on the issue that has been raised today by Ms Szuty. I can see the distinction between the graffiti that is a form of expression, that has something vital and relevant to say about our community or our society or the condition of life, and on the other hand the graffiti that is merely an ugly and costly form of vandalism. The problem is
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