Page 2273 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 15 September 1992
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MR WOOD (Minister for Education and Training, Minister for the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (4.16): Mr Humphries has read the MPI and responded to it. However, I think the spirit of the debate is otherwise. The spirit of the debate is reflected in what Ms Szuty and my colleague Mr Connolly said. I understand that we cannot amend what has been expressed in an MPI, although I thought about doing that as soon as I saw it this morning. It needs one extra word, namely, "art" - the need for graffiti art to be recognised. That is certainly the way in which Ms Szuty meant it, and it is the way I want to take it.
Graffiti art is something that should be recognised and acknowledged as worthwhile. I join with other members in this Assembly in condemning graffiti generally. Graffiti is a problem in our community. It seems to have become rather more current in the last 10 years or so than it was when I was younger, no doubt accompanying the popularity of the spray-can. My first memory of graffiti of the non-spray-can variety was something like "Pig Iron Bob". That goes back some time. Graffiti itself is still a reasonable, democratic expression, and the Labor Party supports that. We support protest; we support demonstrations or marches outside embassies and other forms of democratic protest. Graffiti can do that.
Graffiti is now changed in form, and today we have a situation where graffiti is signature based. Young people, predominantly, stylise a signature, their own name, and leave their mark around the city. It is rather like an animal leaving its mark around its territory in its unique way, to signify to other animals its ownership, or indeed that it exists. I speculate, as I see these signatures around the city, that they signify some lack of fulfilment on the part of these young people, that the way for them to give some expression to the fact that they exist is to stylise their signature and leave it around the city. I believe that some of the train graffiti was almost an extension of that; it was a mark of valour to leave your signature on a train. I think there were spotters sitting along the train tracks and seeing whose signature was where. So my theory is probably valid in that respect.
Let me get to the real issue here, and I do not think it is graffiti. I am not even sure that it is graffiti art that is being discussed today. What we are really talking about is young people and their cultural expression. Graffiti art happens to be a current form of youth expression. In a few years' time it will be something else, no doubt just as challenging, perhaps more challenging. Graffiti is damaging, and I think we should try to get past that. Maybe if we provide more opportunities for graffiti art, for that expression that I theorised was lacking in our young people, we will have less graffiti. We may not have signatures all over the city. Instead, we may have graffiti art, or some further development of art growing out of the graffiti art, which reflects the expression of those young people.
We certainly support the right of young people to contribute to the cultural life of the city. Let me inform the Assembly, in case members do not know, that the Cultural Council is currently undertaking a major review of arts and cultural policies, and they are taking the views of young people most seriously. We have carefully placed young people at the centre of attention there. I have put an excellent young person onto the Cultural Council with this expressly in mind.
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