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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Tuesday, 3 August 2004) . . Page.. 3311 ..

This bill gives the extraordinary power to the Department of Urban Services to remove graffiti from private property without the permission of the owners. I am concerned about the wishy-washy provisions that relate to seeking permission. The bill provides that an authorised person must immediately, before the graffiti removal work is started, take reasonable steps to notify the occupier that the work is to be carried out. I think that provision could be used to remove street art rather than genuine graffiti.

I am not in any way trying to downplay the fact that there is a genuine issue around tagging and graffiti in the ACT, and I understand that there are community concerns about how that problem is dealt with. But we also need to recognise the ongoing presence of street art and public murals within the ACT. Because of their style, a wide array of this work across the territory could be identified as graffiti but they are actually legitimate pieces of public art. There is no doubt that graffiti can be destructive and offensive but to many it is a legitimate form of art. We have had many debates in this Assembly about graffiti; I think the last one was about the sale of spray cans to minors.

The intention of this bill is to reduce graffiti, but the overseas evidence is that banning spray cans has seen an increase in more destructive and expensive forms of graffiti. So I think we need to look at how we are approaching this whole issue. We need to work with the young people who may be looking at ways—ways that might be seen by some people as destructive—to express themselves.

To allay the concerns that I have in relation to graffiti, I have an amendment that seeks to omit the word “immediately” from proposed new section 14A (4). I would like to see at least 24 hours notice given, so that there is at least some attempt to have discussion with the owners of a property to ensure that the work is not legitimate street art. I fear that this bill has unintended consequences that go beyond what the government has intended. It is not hard to envisage that it could be a misuse of power to remove street art rather than graffiti, which is the core problem that we are trying to tackle.

MR WOOD (Minister for Disability, Housing and Community Services, Minister for Urban Services, Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for Arts and Heritage, and Acting Minister for Health) (12.04), in reply: Graffiti does cause considerable disquiet in this community because there is simply far too much of it—there should not be any of it. I think Ms Dundas has more clearly established the difference between the strands than Ms Tucker has. There is perhaps a relationship between street art or aerosol art and tagging, but I think that strand or connection is not strong necessarily. There are two different forms and very often two different strands or groups of people—one very much in the tagging game and one in the street art game.

Ms Tucker has often raised in this place the question of diverting people into aerosol art and, indeed, we have put money into programs to do just that. There are programs up and running about that. I have to say I am not overly impressed with street art but that is a personal view. I do not see it progressing; I do not see artistic development anywhere, and it is all rather repetitious. Maybe if there were growth in that area I would be more impressed.

The Urban Services people list sites in this city where you can put your street art and you do not see any short supply of that. So let us separate street art very carefully from

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