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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (26 March) . . Page.. 618 ..

Mrs Carnell: Get rid of the Labor Party ones that are stuck on walls.

Mr De Domenico: And the ones that say, "Vote Green for the Environment".

MR BERRY: I think this time it would be fair to say that there are probably more around for the Greens Party than anybody else; they have been a bit more active. In any election campaign there are likely to be posters around, and we are just going to have to face the task of cleaning up. Inevitably, I think political parties who use that as a strategy pay a bit of a penalty in this city because it is seen to be defacing public property. It is not as bad as telling the electorate fibs, I have to say; but I think we have also addressed that issue.

I think there ought to be appropriate space for billboards in public places, around shopping centres and so on, where many people in the community travel and attend. There ought to be some appropriate places for these stickers and posters to be affixed. We all have our supporters, and various groups throughout the community have their supporters who want to put their stamp on the message and put it in the most appropriate place. What I think we have to do as a responsible Assembly is provide a place for people to affix these things where they will be seen. Then we might reduce the effect of vandalism on ACTEW power substations and so on. At the end of the day, somebody has to clean it up or it just looks messy.

We did talk about the issue of a voluntary code of conduct for spray-cans, and we would like to see where the Government is coming from in relation to that matter because I think it is important.

Mrs Carnell: It is done, launched.

MR BERRY: The recommendation is fairly clear:

the Government advise the Assembly of the results of its review of whether to change the legislation covering graffiti vandalism and whether to introduce a voluntary code of conduct ...

I know that you have done the voluntary code of conduct, but I suppose that what we will have to do is revisit that in the future and see how effective it has been.

The overwhelmingly powerful recommendation of this committee is on the issue of education. I think all members of the committee were a bit disappointed that the Department of Education did not really have an idea what it might do in this regard, particularly when the Government had taken the issue on and, I suspect, knew about the positive side of education. We have recommended:

the Department of Education and Training establish suitable procedures to enable it to estimate the cost of graffiti vandalism in schools ...

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