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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 12 Hansard (19 November) . . Page.. 4328 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

Heritage) (3.30): Obviously, I support the government's position. The measures proposed by Mr Cornwell are quite inappropriate. As with the government, I thoroughly disapprove of graffiti. It is not compatible with the image of Canberra that we all want. I am very disappointed that the game of tagging that is played disfigures our city so badly.

The government has a range of programs to counter that and manage graffiti. We provide funding of $200,000 a year to government contractors for the removal of that blight, and we do so for both private and leasehold properties. Funding of $825,000 has been allocated for the graffiti youth employment program to continue the removal of graffiti from public assets and to provide part-time work and skills training for young unemployed Canberrans. The government provides a graffiti hotline to which members of the public can report incidents. The graffiti is removed within 24 hours if it is offensive and three working days in other areas. Members can see that graffiti costs this territory a lot of money.

There have been legislative measures. In 1995, the Crimes Act was amended to insert provisions relating to damage under $1,000, with a maximum penalty of 50 penalty units or six months imprisonment. The option of diversionary conferencing was introduced to reduce costs and the levels of criminal prosecution, a path we do not want to go down.

Let me distinguish between graffiti and street art, so-called. Over 400 sites on public assets, significantly underpasses, have been identified as suitable for legal street art in Canberra. Criteria and procedures have been developed for the promotion of legal works and 56 sites have so far been utilised for street art under this scheme.

A new graffiti management strategy is just about to be finalised. It is based on a whole-of-government approach to address graffiti vandalism. The strategy will have five main elements which seek to strike a balance between prevention, removal, diversion, community awareness, education and legislation.

The major non-regulatory elements of the draft graffiti management strategy are graffiti education, a community awareness campaign and development of a media campaign to promote positive approaches to management. This emphasis on education is designed to provide incentives for the community in general, including retailers, to change from being passive victims of graffiti to becoming active participants in combating graffiti in their communities.

The draft graffiti management strategy includes a new voluntary code of practice as a cost-effective management tool in restricting the sale of graffiti by major retailers. In South Australia, a voluntary code of conduct has been supported by the retail industry generally.

Mr Cornwell's bill aims to reduce the incidence by prohibiting the sale of spray paint cans to a person under 18 years of age. However, instead of addressing the issue of illegal graffiti, Mr Cornwell's bill seems to transfer the full responsibility to small business and, as such, is discriminatory in its application. That is especially the case because of the fairly heavy impact described by Mr Stanhope. The bill penalises consumers who use the paint legitimately and the retailers who sell the paint.

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