Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to discuss today the marked increase in the incidence of graffiti and vandalism in my electorate of Goldstein, a series of incidents which is increasingly common across many other parts of Melbourne. I cite as an example the very shopping strip in which my office is based in Centre Road in Bentleigh, one of the 17 suburbs in my electorate. It is a wonderful shopping strip but it has increasingly been confronted with endless graffiti: shopfront hits and tagged windows and advertisements on bus shelters and a host of other sites up and down that strip and the surrounding streets. All of the signs are being attacked and defaced by graffiti and it is dreadful. At a time when retail is hurting, and the last 12 months have been perhaps the worst in 20 years, it saps morale. It is ugly, it is a blight on the landscape and so many local residents and traders alike are fed up and are calling for action on graffiti.

We have people reporting that while graffiti has always been around, it is increasingly becoming out of control. Centre Road has been made a most unattractive place to shop due to the extent of graffiti. President Tania Moss of the Bentleigh Traders Association, whom I have met with on a number of occasions, said the traders paid for the graffiti to be removed from shops on a weekly basis. Every week they have a person coming in for nearly one day to remove graffiti up and down the strip. It is costing literally thousands of dollars—no assistance from council—and all in an attempt to maintain the truly pleasant nature of that strip at a time when retail sales are really being hit all over the country.

This is but one example. I could talk in equal terms about many other areas in my electorate including the shopping strip in Highett, Carnegie, Hampton Street, the Beaumaris Concourse, Ormond, Black Rock and Sandringham. It is very unfortunate that some of these sorts of local community issues could well have been dealt with in the last 12 months and, in fact, the voters and the members of my electorate have been denied effective action because, unfortunately, we were not able to get onto the government benches at the last election. We were taking to local electorates all over the country a very flexible and responsive program designed very much to tackle these sorts of issues of graffiti, vandalism and other unnecessary local violence. The program was intended to enable councils and local community groups to apply for funding for crime prevention projects and strategies to deal with crime prevention. It was to include CCTV systems for community hubs and shopping strips, security patrols, graffiti removal kits for traders associations and alarm systems for sporting clubs. It was to be a highly flexible and responsive program to deal with the fundamental concerns of Australians. At the moment Australians are deeply anxious about their circumstance. The government is offering no direction and no leadership, you have a leader with no authority and people are concerned. That is why savings rates have gone up dramatically. That is why retail sales are down. This sort of cost is being imposed on our retailers who can ill afford to be dealing with graffiti and other incidents and damage and vandalism. We need a government in place that can live within its means, focus on the issues that are of concern to our local communities and make sure that Australia heads in the right direction again. (Time expired)

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