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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Wednesday, 11 February 2004) . . Page.. 171 ..

leave to table some photographs that were taken of vandalism in Civic centre. In fact, the vandalism took place outside this Assembly and all the way along London Circuit. Some of the graffiti next to the National Bank has not been taken off as yet.

Leave granted.

MR CORNWELL: I present the following papers:

Graffiti – Photographs (10) of graffiti around London Circuit.

The photographs, I might add, are also available in electronic format upon request. May I say that one or two of them also indicate the condition of the vandals themselves as it appears that they cannot spell—at least not some of the obscene words, anyway.

It is interesting to note that, under the Financial Management Act, the December 2003 outputs progress report for the Urban Services portfolio states that the original target for graffiti removal in the six months to December 2003 was 95 per cent. The result, however, for that six months was only 78 per cent. The explanation given for that is worth quoting:

Reduced performance against specific timeframes has occurred due to increased graffiti activity around the Canberra region over the past few months.

I wonder whether those past few months coincided with the rejection by the majority of this Assembly—namely, the Labor government, the Greens and the Democrats—of my spray can legislation. It did receive considerable publicity. Did it therefore give the green light or the multicoloured light—I am not sure whether we should just restrict graffiti vandalism to one colour—to the vandals out there who, not being very intelligent, quite properly would come to the conclusion that the government is soft on their destructive behaviour? I think that is a reasonable assessment to make.

I am concerned about this most regrettable situation. Indeed, it appears the government is also concerned, because subsequent to the publicity and the increased graffiti, we had some soothing comments from the government. For example, the City Chronicle of 20 January reported that a spokesman for the Minister for Urban Services had said that the government was monitoring the effectiveness of the New South Wales legislation, which I would remind members banned the sale of spray cans to people under the age of 18. So they were going to monitor the effectiveness of this legislation.

In November, Mr Wood said on ABC television that the government may revisit the decision to ban the sale of spray cans to under-18-year-olds. We subsequently received information from the City of Townsville about a graffiti plan which proposes taking immediate action to rapidly remove graffiti, maintaining statistical and photographic information systems, and updating and referring records of tags to the Queensland police service on a monthly basis. Goodness, that is a bit of an innovative step, isn’t it? The plan also suggests assisting aerosol artists by providing paid employment—that is a thought. As I have said in this place before, I have no real objection to murals such as the rather magnificent one of a dragon on a wall at the Hackett shops. Members should have a look at that one.

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