Page 4372 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 8 December 1993
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It relates to this matter. When I visited the Aboriginal community of Lajamanu earlier this year I saw a shed in the Lajamanu school that had been painted with a particularly exceptional Aboriginal desert dot painting. The shed had been the subject of discussion by people I had met in a series of places as I was approaching Lajamanu, and I was very interested to see it. It was explained to me that the community had a great deal of difficulty with sheds in the school because they were always the object of graffiti. The result was that the elders in the community determined that they would actually put a sacred painting on this site. These galvanised iron sheds look quite spectacular. They are the best quality desert painting that I have seen. Of course, as a matter of interest, that ended the graffiti problems, because none of the young people in that community were prepared to interfere with something that was part and parcel of their culture and their community.
It is interesting that in some ways the same concept is applied to what Ms Szuty is doing. If we really wish to deal with graffiti, then give it a place. Young people tend to respect each other's work. I think we would see a diminishing of the graffiti problem. It is what Gary Humphries described as the carrot approach as opposed to the stick approach, and I think it is a very worthwhile approach.
Madam Speaker, I see a series of amendments on my desk. I am quite happy to support the amendments put up by Mr Humphries because I think they retain the meaning and the direction of Ms Szuty's motion and they address some of the concerns raised by Mr Connolly and Mr Wood. Therefore, I think it is quite appropriate for me to support those. With reference to Mr Stevenson's amendment, I am afraid that the principle of dictating what is non-political and what is not non-political would be, to me, an affront to free speech in this area. As far as I can see, the murals that have been painted on bus stations and so forth have been non-political. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, there has not been any outcry over some form of politicisation of this process. In the first place, I do not think it is necessary to put such an amendment and, secondly, really that amendment is about social control rather than about freedom of speech, so I would not be able to support it.
MR HUMPHRIES (11.51): Madam Speaker, I might just make a brief comment on Mr Stevenson's amendment before Ms Szuty closes the debate. I take the point Mr Moore has made about political content of murals. I certainly think it would be inappropriate for anybody to begin to use this process of public art as a way of effectively running some sort of political campaign. If the system becomes relatively well organised, I suppose it is conceivable that somebody could come forward and decide to try to manipulate the system to plaster messages about a particular political party or a particular issue with a strong political flavour to it. That would be an unfortunate corruption of the concept which is being promoted in this motion.
I do not see this coordinating process - the process of vetting, if you like - the way in which murals are put forward as a process to be managed by the Government at all. Madam Speaker, this would be best managed by an organisation which was removed somewhat from the Government. A community group, a charity or something like that could conceivably be involved in coordinating this kind of activity, so I would hope that it would not be a real issue. However, I think that Mr Stevenson does make a reasonably good
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