Page 538 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 17 February 2016
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care if they interject once or twice but it was more than once that you interjected. I know that you did it in a soft way and you were not yelling; I respect that. But I still do not want people interjecting, especially when I know they are going to have a chance to speak in reply.
All the kinds of things you were saying just now you can say to Mr Rattenbury when you stand up and speak in reply. You can make your points very clearly then. There is absolutely no need for you to interject across the chamber in order to make the points now. I would much prefer Mr Rattenbury be given the opportunity to speak without interruption. Thank you. Mr Rattenbury.
MR RATTENBURY: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. As I was saying, this was the first time that such a meeting was held. It did allow, I think, a very constructive exchange of views. It certainly highlighted that property damage and illegal graffiti are major sources of complaints from some sections of the community. I made this point very clearly in the discussion. I was interested to hear how we may be able to direct urban art to legal sites in a way that allows creativity to flourish while at the same time reduce illegal graffiti.
This roundtable gave me a chance to hear from local artists about the issues around urban art and for the government to discuss some new initiatives. Artists suggested, for example, having some form of education measures to stop artists from tagging, particularly fences and street signs, by pointing out both how costly it was and some of the safety issues. Lower profile areas such as underpasses could be identified as beginner sites and higher visitation or higher use areas could be used for commissioned art or allocated to more experienced artists.
Together with local artists, we agreed to appoint a graffiti coordinator, and I was pleased to see that that position was recently filled by TAMS. There is now somebody undertaking that role. Part of their role is to implement and review the ACT government’s graffiti management strategy to make sure we have the right framework. It involves a two-pronged approach: to remove unwanted graffiti at highly visible locations while also providing dedicated resources to work with the community to coordinate new sites for legal graffiti or street art.
The role we saw for the graffiti coordinator would include assisting in coordinating removal of graffiti on public assets by working closely with the government’s contractors. The coordinator would also assist private landholders to address graffiti issues on their properties through contacts with graffiti removal contractors who have skills in this area. The role will also include reviewing current legal graffiti sites and identifying potential new legal graffiti sites across the territory, including private landowners who may be interested in hosting or commissioning urban art, and finally developing relationships with the street art community, businesses and promoting legal graffiti and street art sites. This would include peer group pressure to redirect illegal graffiti activities to legal sites or sites on private property.
We need to engage the art sector in the development of the revised strategy and find a way forward that allows artists to create some really dynamic work in pockets of
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