Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The Petrie electorate is one of the most beautiful places in Queensland. We have great suburbs. A few weeks ago, though, in Mango Hill, in Deception Bay, I was joined by a volunteer and some of my staff to clean up graffiti in our electorate. Graffiti is a blight on our community, and it's a poor reflection on our area. The reality is that everyone needs to take greater care in our community, and it starts with simple acts of service.

I want to thank the people who helped me. I want to thank Didi from Enhance Painting for coming out and helping me paint over some of that graffiti. It was particularly noticeable on Deception Bay Road. It was really bad there and had built up over the years. It was also particularly bad at Mango Hill, down near the Mango Hill Market Place. I think it's important that people paint over this straight away.

I also want to thank Inspirations Paint at Kippa-Ring, Craig, the owner, and Amanda. Thank you for donating litres of paint to make this possible. They did this previously as well. There was a building at Kippa-Ring that had been sitting vacant for years. It was a commercial building that the owners wouldn't do anything about. The graffiti was completely covering the place, so I said, 'Look, do you mind if I get in and clean it up?' It was on a main road, on the corner of Elizabeth Avenue and Anzac Avenue at Kippa-Ring, and it was a really poor reflection on the community. I got in there with a team of volunteers and painted the whole thing black. It looked brilliant. Painting it black made it a lot easier to repaint over if kids were to tag it again. If it were tagged in white or green, it would be much easier to get out there and tag over it. If you do it immediately, people actually stop tagging it. It remained tag-free for about two years until it was recently renovated into a new commercial premises.

I say to people with private property: please paint back over your fences and back over your commercial buildings if they're tagged. It will stop. I say to the Queensland government: consider murals on the backs of places like the Bruce Highway. I noticed that a lot of the commercial buildings are being tagged there and that the Queensland government isn't doing a good enough job there. There are some TMR properties that aren't being cleaned. You can email Energex at custserv@energex.com.au. If you email the power pole that's being graffitied, they'll come and clean it. You can also call the council as well on 32050555 if you notice graffiti on bus stops and bins. More can be done to help people with art and murals in the community, but as far as private property goes, let's clean it up and make sure that we have pride in our community.

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