KEY POINTS:
The Government is about to launch a new weapon in the ongoing war against graffiti - the Stop (Stop Tagging Our Place) strategy.
Police Minister Annette King said Stop, which will be announced in the next fortnight, includes legislative change, funding for council and community anti-graffiti programmes and targeted enforcement improvements.
It is hoped the changes will help eradicate what has become a multi-million-dollar headache.
"We're going to have a more clearly identified offence of graffiti and tagging, increased sentences and enable community work to be established as a sentence," she said.
The minister has firsthand experience of tagging having just painted out a tag on the side of her garage - for the second time in six weeks.
"We had a tagger go through Hataitai on a Saturday night and had a great old time - they even left one of their spray cans in the gutter outside my place because they couldn't get the lid off it."
Ms King said she felt angry at the violation of her private property and immediately painted out the tag which she described as a personal autograph.
"Any satisfaction the tagger might have got from having their name plastered out on the street was pretty quickly removed."
While she understood the level of frustration about tagging, Ms King said that was no justification at all for murder or violence - a reference to the 15-year-old tagger who was killed in Manurewa last Saturday night.
The full scale of the tagging problem is largely unknown. There is no central agency which gathers statistics, but in the worst hit cities - Auckland and Manukau - authorities spent almost $3 million cleaning up graffiti last year.
That is likely to be a fraction of the real cost as it does not include a host of targets including private properties or those owned by Transit or rail authorities.
Trusts have begun spreading as local authorities work with communities to stamp out the problem.
The Government is hoping to get agreement to change the stalled Manukau City Council (Control of Graffiti) private member's bill into a government bill that would apply nationwide.
. The Manukau bill has been held up after advice parts of it were in breach of the Bill of Rights.
A sticking point was the banning of spray paint cans to those under 18.
Ms King said bans would not be in the new bill, but some restrictions at the point of sale would be put in place.
New accountability initiatives in the bill would include increased use of restorative justice.
"I think some of the most effective punishment is when taggers have to clean up their tags in the full glare of the public," said Ms King.
'One of worst' arrested
A teenager dubbed one of Auckland's worst graffiti vandals has been arrested after a year-long campaign which left at least 100 tags around the city.
The 16-year-old is allegedly the force behind a catalogue of spray paint and etching tags which are conservatively estimated to have cost $10,000. He was arrested on Thursday. He will appear in the Youth Court this month.
"He is without doubt one of the worst graffiti vandals we have come across," said Auckland City Council graffiti prevention officer Rob Shields.
It is alleged the youth was caught red-handed on CCTV tagging two windows in the early hours of Christmas Day.
"We knew him and we knew his tag, but we just had to catch him in the act," said Mr Shields.
It is also alleged the youth had graduated from spray-painting to etching his tag into glass windows.
-Stuart Dye
COUNTING COSTS
* Auckland and Manukau Cities are the country's worst-hit by tagging and graffiti
* Between them they spent almost $3 million cleaning up graffiti last year
* That is likely to be a fraction of the real cost as it does not include a host of targets including private properties or those owned by Transit or rail authorities
* There is no central agency which gathers statistics on tagging
* In Auckland City, 48,000 sites were cleaned in one year, costing $1.6 million. 191 people were arrested
* In Manukau, 317,000 tags were removed last year, costing $1.2 million
* Volunteers in Auckland use 240 litres of paint every month
* In Manukau, they used a total of 25,760 litres of paint last year
* In west Auckland, from April last year to date there were 182 arrests and 266 charges for graffiti and wilful damage
* Each tag can cost about $50 to clean up
* A $3 spray paint can cause up to $10,000 in damage
SURVEY
Is graffiti a problem in your area?
(percentage of people who said "yes" in the most recent Quality of Life Survey)
Rodney 60
North Shore 56
Waitakere 74
Auckland 82
Manukau 82
Hamilton 66
Tauranga 62
Porirua 77
Hutt 56
Wellington 58
Christchurch 72
Dunedin 59
