Port Phillip Council to hire full-time graffiti officer

A COUNCIL has voted to employ a full-time graffiti officer charged with wiping out tagging in Melbourne’s inner south – but the plan comes with a hefty price tag for ratepayers.

MORE than $100,000 will be spent on a new full-time council role aimed at wiping out graffiti in Port Phillip.

And small-time criminals could be forced to scrub off tagging under the council’s new graffiti management program.

Government, councils should not ignore growing graffiti vandalism

Port Phillip councillors last night voted to hire a full-time graffiti management officer amid a sharp rise in vandalism.

In the past three years Port Phillip has been hit with enough graffiti to fully cover the playing surface of the MCG four times over, with removal costing ratepayers about $381,000 a year.

This year council contractors have already scrubbed off more than 16,200sq m of spray paint.

Mayor Bernadene Voss said the council’s current program to stamp out graffiti “barely touched the surface” and forking out an extra $135,000 to “get tough and get results” was the best way forward.

Almost every surface at JL Murphy Reserve was tagged in a graffiti spree at the Port Melbourne sports ground earlier this year. Picture: Supplied

Under the new graffiti management strategy given the green light last night, $105,000 will be splashed on the new full-time position, and $30,000 will be spent doubling the council’s street art program from five murals a year to 10.

The graffiti management officer will be expected to develop a new graffiti management plan, set up a community reference group, implement graffiti prevention measures, represent the council on the Municipal Association of Victoria’s graffiti working group and work with the Justice Department to set up a community service graffiti removal program.

Cr Voss said a ‘business as usual’ approach to graffiti “doesn’t cut it anymore”.

“Tagging appears overnight, every night in all sort of places (and) the ever-increasing tagging is ... affecting the way (people) view their neighbourhoods,” she said.

“(Residents) don’t want to walk down the street and see every house tagged, or a seat in the gardens spray painted; they don’t want to turn up to play footy and see their clubhouse violated.

“It’s not acceptable just to live with this, we can and need to do something about this.”

Cr Dick Gross said it was “good to spend this amount of money on the issue”.

“This is a complicated social issue and ... when you see tagging around the place it can be really demoralising for the community,” he said.

But Greens councillors Katherine Copsey, Ogy Simic and Tim Baxter were against sending criminals out to “inhale noxious chemicals” as part of the clean-up process.

The unpaid community service program gives offenders the chance to make reparation for their crimes and aims to rehabilitate and provide work-related skills to increase their chances of finding jobs.

It is also used as a diversion program for some people to avoid jail time for petty crimes.

Cr Copsey said the work should be done by a “genuine volunteer workforce”.

“I don’t think going out and having to inhale noxious chemicals and scrub graffiti off walls is actually providing people with much rehabilitation or supportive reskilling,” she said.

Cr Ogy Simic said “forcing people to put on orange overalls and scrub” was not an appropriate solution.

Cr Marcus Pearl said the program provided second-chance pathways for low-level offenders to turn their lives around and helped keep people out of prison.

“I would be happy to go out there in my ‘orange overalls’ and scrub with the people (of the program),” he said.