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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 12 Hansard (19 November) . . Page.. 4303 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

police youth liaison officers started attending the graffiti lessons at the youth centre and had open discussions about graffiti.

Let us contrast that approach, which is one of thoughtfulness, compassion and interest in the social dynamics, with Mr Cornwell's tabling speech. I absolutely reject the language that he has used. Mr Pratt, in his loud interjections for the last five or 10 minutes of Mr Stanhope's speech, continually talked about labelling. He said he was being labelled because Mr Stanhope talked about the response from Mr Cornwell-and I would add Mr Carr, unfortunately-as being populist, ill thought out and part of a law and order campaign.

Mr Pratt did not like that labelling. I do not like hearing a member of this Assembly talk about young people in this community as "pathetic specimens", by saying that the level of "their literacy presumably extends to only these rather primitive signs"and that they are "carrying on their moronic pursuits". I think Mr Cornwell should withdraw that for the sake of the integrity of this place. He nods because he is comfortable with it. It is a tragedy. When I read those words, I could not believe it.

I am interested in talking about this issue a little further. I wonder if Mr Cornwell has done any work at all to understand the culture of graffiti and hip-hop. It certainly does not appear so. For the benefit of Mr Cornwell, if he is even vaguely interested, people who do graffiti are generally known in the cultural group as writers, graffiti writers. Writers can either do tagging or naming, or they can do piecing, which Mr Cornwell and other people describe as street art.

These writers, the taggers and the namers and those who do the pieces, are not totally separate groups, neither are the forms of art separated or the skills different. This connection is actually a positive thing. It enables projects such as the Warringah Council's project to work. If tagging is driven further underground and separated from the work of the aerosol artists, there is less chance of fostering the taggers' work, thereby increasing their skills and encouraging them to engage in the art form in a positive way.

The relationship with the graffiti writers in the ACT should be developed, not smacked around by legislation such as this. Any evaluation of even the current approach suggests that it is far from effective. We have a costly and arguably ineffective system whereby a cat-and-mouse game occurs between the graffiti removal team and graffiti writers. We have even had a case where the team offered to totally repaint the wall of a shop in Kambah that had been used by graffiti writers for 10 years, with the permission of the shop owner. The argument put to the shop owner by the team was that allowing the wall to be used as a legal space was encouraging graffiti.

However, not surprisingly, once that space was made unavailable, graffiti vandalism increased in the area. This example raises questions about the government policy, but also particularly about the role of the graffiti removal team in policy. We are seeing a decrease in available legal places in Canberra. Those at the Griffin Centre and the youth centre are going, and the Woden interchange place is going and that is a good space. I want to know whether the government is thinking about this in its policy for redevelopment, particularly the Bunda Street redevelopment. I understand that the skate park at Weston Creek was painted over recently, because a resident complained. Is this government policy? Were the artists consulted? As far as I know, they were not.

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