Writing to your MP

I've recieved an email asking for help on dealing with government.  I have attached three responses from various sources regarding the failure to deal with graffiti at Drummoyne Public School.  

The first is a response from the Department of Education to my compadre, who wrote to the Department on 14 January regarding this issue.  He got a response less than 4 weeks later, and the graffiti was cleaned up before this letter was sent.

Coincidentally, a day earlier, I had written to my local MP, Angela D'Amore about exactly the same thing (although my compadre and me email each other from time to time with information on what we are doing, we don't exactly co-ordinate our actions).  Since Angela didn't bother responding after three weeks (not even an acknowledgement letter), I gave up hope of getting a response and wrote directly to the Minister for Education.  Her response is below - note that it is almost exactly the same as the response my compadre got (which is not surprising - why rewrite a letter when the original is good enough).  

The Minister sent her letter back via Angela's office, which also doesn't surprise me.  Normal protocol is that if you write to your MP, the MP will forward it on to the Minister responsible for a reply.  However, when they do that, they always write back to you to say, "thanks for your letter, I have asked the Minister for X for a response, and will forward it to you as soon as I get it".  

Angela's staff must have missed that lesson in protocol.

Here starts the lesson:

In Angela's last paragraph, she suggests that in future, I make contact via the telephone or email.  I strongly suggest you don't do that.  MP's get bombarded with SPAM, and there is a good chance your email will become lost in the deluge.  Spend the 55 cents to post it.  Emails also tend to be written in haste - so take your time and write and a letter with care.  

Whatever you do, never make a phone call alone.  There's a good chance nothing will ever come of it.  Put your concerns down on paper.  Paper leaves a trail; it has to be filed.  It's very hard to ignore paper, and you have a clear and concise record of what you said.  Note that in this case, I was able to reprint the letter that I had sent to Angela, and then re-send it to the Minister for Education - and only then did I get a response.

A new kid in town

Today, I have the dubious pleasure of introducing you to a new tagger in our neighbourhood - a spunky little twerp with the tag 'semen'.  I'm not kidding.  'semen' has appeared in at least a dozen locations in Abbotsford and Five Dock over the last week.  I photographed 8 of his efforts today, and have laid them out in Google Maps.  I didn't bother photographing all his tags in the Five Dock shops area.  As you can see, the photos below are stretched out nearly along Great North Road, and they continue off the bottom of the screen into the Five Dock shopping area.  I guess our bright young lad left home one morning with a desire to get something to eat, and then tagged every public edifice along the way.

A post box.

A bus stop.

A real estate sign.

Another bus stop, this one outside a primary school.

Signage on the fence of the same primary school.

A Telstra phone box.

Another post box.

Yet another bus stop.

That gives a sum total of:

• One real estate sign
• One phone booth
• One school sign
• Two post boxes
• Three bus stops

The bus stops are the responsibility of Council - they are easy to get fixed, since our Council is on the ball.  The post boxes are probably a write off - Australia Post is fairly useless at responding.  It's easier for me to go down there with a bottle of metho and a rag and clean them myself.

The school sign should be reasonably straight forward - although I have never dealt with this school before, so I don't know how on the ball the Principal is.

The real estate sign may or may not be too hard - some agents care a lot, and others not at all.  After all, the client paid for it, so why should they bother what condition it is in?

These tags have all been here for some days, and although they could be classed as offensive, nothing has been done about removing them - because no one has bothered reporting them.

It still gets right up my nose that buses stop at these three bus stops numerous times every day, yet Sydney Buses feels that it has no obligation as a good corporate citizen to report the damage to the local council.  Pathetic really - even worse given that Sydney Buses is a government authority.

The same goes for the post boxes - a postie empties these once a day, yet clearly Australia Post employs deem it not part of their duties to report graffiti on Australia Post assets.  How sad is that?

Similarly, Telstra have to send someone around every so often to clean the coins out of the phone booth, yet the people doing it never seem to notice the attendant graffiti.

As for the school, teachers drive past that sign each day as they arrive for work, yet none appear to have noticed it.  They clearly care a lot.

Note though that in order to get this lot cleaned up, I have to make the following reports:

• One report to council for the bus stops
• One report to Telstra
• One report to Australia Post
• One report to the school
• One report to the real estate agent

And you wonder why it takes so long to get graffiti removed!  Australia Post, the Education Department and Telstra won't let Council clean their property, so instead of getting Council to immediately clean 7 out of these 8 sites in one go, we have to go through the tedium of reporting it to this group and that group and someone else.  Council will deal with it immediately, the school in an unknown timeframe, Australia Post in maybe 3 months and Telstra - who knows, if ever?

It's so easy for little idiots to apply, yet so difficult to legally remove.  Talk about fighting a battle with both hands tied behind your back!

An experiment in not "complaining"

I've had a few comments from nutters stating that I should stop "complaining".

Well, too bad. After thinking about your feedback, I have decided the following:

• I am not an architect, so I cannot design beautiful buildings for our city
• I am not an artist, so I can't create artworks that lift the spirits and please the eye
• I am not a green thumb, so I can't plant gardens that soothe the soul and cool the temperament
• I am not an engineer, so I can't fix our roads and footpaths
• In short, there is not much that I can personally do to physically improve our quality of life

I am however a great complainer. It was what I was born to do. I have worked in the belly of the beast, spending a year penning responses to people complaining to CityRail, so I think I know complaining inside out. I have dealt with a wider variety of complaints (and nutters) than you can possibly comprehend. I have been trained by experts, and have worked with the craftsmen of complaints. My manager at the time was the doyen of flak-catchers, the zen master of complaints management, the guru of grumpiness.

During my time there, I happened to introduce the idea of the form letter to CityRail - my subsequent dealings with RailCorp can be thought of as punishment for my sins.

But as a sop to those who believe that "complaining" is unnecessary, and that councils will find and fix things without anyone telling them that a problem exists, I have devised an experiment.

On the weekend, I spotted two things that I would normally report to Canada Bay Council - graffiti reappearing on a target that gets hit almost every weekend, and a large and rapidly growing pot hole on a busy street.

I spotted the graffiti on Sunday. In the past, I have usually reported graffiti like this via the council's anti-graffiti website on the weekend, and the anti-graffiti team has removed it by close of business on Monday. I have sometimes seen them at it first thing on Monday morning. There is a very short time lag between reporting and action. You tell Council, they fix. Simple as that.

Pot holes can take a little longer - perhaps a week - between reporting and filling in.

Today is Tuesday. I went past the graffiti this morning, and it is still there. Imagine that - no one has reported it, and nothing has been done about it. Funny that. I'm still waiting for Council's magic eyeball in the sky to spot it and report it.

Same goes for the pot hole. I drove over it again this morning with the usual suspension breaking crunch.

I'm going to wait until next Monday, and then I'll report both problems and time how long it takes to fix them.

If that doesn't convince the "stop moaning, you whinging bastard" crowd, nothing will. All I can suggest then is that they start taking their medication again and go back to drooling in the corner.

Cleaning up Bondi

From my old Bondi flatmate Penny comes these photos of the efforts of her friend, Andrew W, to keep the neighbourhood up to scratch.  

Andrew's pet hates appear to be dumped furniture and, erm, other things.

Andrew regularly emails photos of dumped furniture to Waverly Council along with a request to have it removed.

Brown vs Green

Leichhardt Council is easily the greenest council in the inner west - if not Sydney. By that, I mean it has the greatest number of councillors from the Greens political party.

Many parts of the Leichhardt Council area though are an absolute eyesore - almost as if Greens have a blind spot when it comes to "brown" issues.

We normally think of "brownfield" sites as former industrial sites that are no longer occupied and which have become severely dilapidated.

When I think of "brown", I think of the "unnatural" or urban environment - large concrete storm water drains, concrete or tarmac roads, concrete or steel bridges, concrete footpaths, brick or concrete walls, metal substations, metal pipelines, wooden fences, metal street light poles, metal control boxes for traffic lights, the glass of shop fronts, footpath furniture like metal rubbish bins, sign posts and metal seats. All these make up the "brown" environment - an environment that few people will ever hug. Even fewer will noisily march down George St waving placards and chanting to save this environment (unless it has some heritage value).

If we are to have things like concrete storm water drains cutting through our suburbs, let us at least make them as attractive as possible, rather than ugly, eyeball-searing canvases displaying the uncivilised nature of our least polished residents.

I find it funny that so many Greenies choose to live in the Leichhardt Council area, which has one of the smallest amounts of open green space of any council area in NSW. They choose to live in cramped, brick rabbit hutches with tiny or non-existent yards in the middle of a concrete jungle. By my reckoning, Leichhardt is one of the "brownest" environments around. How odd is that?

The brown environment is the neglected environment. It is the stuff of unloved authorities like Telstra, Australia Post, the RTA, RailCorp and the energy and water companies; and of local government, which many residents profess to hate, or treat as useless.

Many government authorities care little for presentation when it comes to taking care of their assets. So long as a bridge is standing, or a pipe is not leaking, or electricity is flowing along a wire, then all is good. Way down the list of corporate priorities is the idea of having "good looking" infrastructure. Keeping it working is hard enough, and engineers are a notoriously anti-social bunch, not much given to the concept of aesthetics. Beautification is for chicks, and most of these authorities are the last redoubt of the Pauline Hanson-voting blue collar male.

I choose to care about the brown environment because it is the area of the unmentionables. All the trendoids have long joined the green camp, and I don't blame them. Swimming with dolphins is far more pleasurable than swimming with turds.

But someone has to take an interest in it, and it might as well be me.

Clean Up Australia Day

Canada Bay is a city with an enormous amount of waterfront - and that waterfront attracts plenty of rubbish.  The canals that feed into the harbour have floating rubbish traps on them to collect the plastic bottles and cans and plastic bags that would otherwise flow into the harbour.  

But plenty more rubbish ends up in the harbour - some blown in from overflowing rubbish bins or carelessly dropped, and some deliberately tossed into the harbour.

630,000 people turned out today to help cleanup their bit of Australia - that's over 5% of the population.  Most of the sites in our area only needed people for 2 hours or so, which is all I put in.  I joined a crew of half a dozen clearing mainly broken glass from muddy mangrove flats.  An earlier crew had concentrated on plastic bottles, leaving us free to concentrate on the remains of dozens and dozens of smashed beer bottles lining the mangroves.

There is clearly no shortage of people who want to keep Australia beautiful, and the number who turnout on the first weekend in March each year continues to grow.  

If people are willing to spend part of their Sunday with perfect strangers picking used syringes and used condoms and broken glass out of a sea of mud, then I hope I can convince some of them to start noticing and reporting other things that need taking care of.

Anyone can pick up rubbish, but generally only council or RTA road workers can fill in pot holes for instance.  I can't fill in the newly emerged monstrous pot hole on Barnstaple Road for instance - but I can ring Council in the morning and tell them about it.  

And why should I do that?  

Because I had a councillor sitting on my lounge on Friday night, drink in hand, telling me that Council as a rule can't fix pot holes that it doesn't know about.  

It's bleeding obvious to him, and bleeding obvious to me, but apparently still not bleeding obvious to a lot of other people.  Roads don't have sensors in them that send a signal back to headquarters when a pot hole opens up.  

If you care about "quality of life" issues in your local area, and you see something that needs fixing, then you need to be prepared to take the next step and tell someone about it - your council, the RTA, Telstra - whoever.  Don't expect somebody else to take care of it for you.  

Thousands of tonnes of rubbish were collected today.  None of that would have happened if everybody in Australia thought that it was somebody else's responsibility to take care of it.  

Addiction and punishment

Here we have a local electricity substation that has been vandalised.  I reported this to Energy Australia around 6 months ago, but it was never cleaned up.  I might have given them the wrong substation ID, or the job simply went walkabout.  This building is on a reasonably major road, and is right next to a large residential development.  It is not hidden away in a backwater somewhere, out of the eye of the public.  Even so, it has been left to steadily deteriorate at the hands of vandals.  This building will continue to degenerate unless someone reports it (don't worry, I reported it again yesterday).

Have a look at this close up - note the tag of "oats".  Mr Oats is a fairly prolific tagger in this area.  I assume he is male, since most vandals are male, and most are also under the age of 18.  Mr Oats has a prodigious work ethic, which unfortunately has been misdirected into a socially destructive behaviour.  I assume he is under 17, because his work spans a small geographic area, indicating that he is stuck with walking everywhere.  He is too young to drive.

Mr Oats clearly enjoys his work, because he leaves it everywhere.  I presume he gets a big kick out it - a natural high from an endorphin rush - and because of that, he is addicted to tagging.  He is the equivalent of a packet a day smoker - he's psychologically and physically hooked, and he won't give up easily.  Tagging gives his life meaning.  If you ask me, his life must be miserable for this sort of thing to give him meaning, but each to his own.

This is why I think harsher penalties for tagging won't work.  I'm not saying that I don't like harsh penalties - what I am saying is that it is extremely unlikely that Mr Oats will be caught, and even if he is caught, the Police are likely to hand out a caution because of his age.  Even if they do go the whole hog and take him to court, he'd have to be exceptionally unlucky to draw a "hanging and flogging" magistrate, and thus end up behind bars.  Community service is the most likely outcome, given that there is little point in slapping a $2200 fine on a 15 year old boy with no money and no job.  That's the opinion that I have drawn from reading crime statistics for the last few years.  The facts on those arrested, charged and jailed speak for themselves.

I can see that Mr Oats is shaking in his boots following the recent passing of tougher legislation - not.  He faces almost no chance of getting caught, because it is simply not a priority to the Police.  If they do catch him, he's unlikely to go to court.  If he does go to court, the likelihood of prison is extremely remote.  A light slapping with a wet lettuce leaf is the worst case.

I'm sure his greatest concern at the moment is where he can steal his next stash of spray cans from.

This is why I concentrate on the clean-up angle.  The government can posture and talk tough and throw around harsh penalties, but in the end, all we want is this muck removed.  And it will never get removed unless it's reported.

Complaints, complaints, complaints

I don't get a lot of comments on this blog (or an awful lot of traffic), but a number of people have commented that I should essentially "stop complaining to council".

I'd like to draw a distinction between a "complaint" and a "report".

If you are burgled and you ring the Police, you are making a report, not a complaint.

If you suffer a heart attack and ring for an ambulance, you are making a report, not a complaint.

If your house is on fire and you ring the fire brigade, you are making a report (or more likely, yelling for help), not a complaint.

If you are unhappy with the service that these agencies provide - ie, you die before the ambulance arrives, then you may write to them later and complain about it.  However, the initial contact that you make with them is a report.  It is an exchange of information.

Many government agencies can be thought of as machines that need to be fed.  We feed them information, and they churn it around and produce services - an ambulance ride, a filled pot hole, a welfare payment, and half burnt house.  They only work when we, the public, feed them with information.  The ambulance services do not have ambulances prowling the streets looking for victims to collect.  The fire brigades don't go door to door asking if you have a fire that needs putting out.  

They've all setup contact centres (or call centres) which have one purpose and one purpose only - to collect information from the public and to pass it onto their front line staff.

Councils are no different.  They all have a contact centre or service centre of some sort (it might be simply a beefed up reception desk) for taking phone calls, and many now have some sort of web based e-forms system for accepting information from residents.  They range from the very good to the utterly appalling, but most councils are doing their best to streamline the process of gathering and processing this information.

The Australian Graffiti Register system that many councils are now using is a case in point.  It is available internally within councils, so that staff who see graffiti when they are out and about can report it, and it is available to the general public as well.  If councils weren't interested in gathering information on graffiti from the public, why would they bother to make this system publicly available?  

The fact is, council staff can't be everywhere at once.  Who is best placed to report a pot hole in your street - someone that lives there (like yourself), or a council employee that lives on the other side of the suburb?  

Councils do not have a "magic eye in the sky" that automatically spots and reports all pot holes, blocked drains, broken signs, abandoned cars, dead trees, collapsed footpaths, dumped rubbish and graffiti.  The only eyes it has are yours and mine.  If you won't use yours, don't come complaining to me about the state of your neighbourhood.

Two peoples separated by different mindsets

Since starting this blog, I've had a range of comments and emails from people across Canada Bay.  Most are supportive, but some come right out of left field.  Take this one for instance, in response to a post of mine about smashed up bus shelters near Five Dock Park (I have left the spelling and punctuation as it was posted):

do you seriously have no life?
of course there are some problems within the park and as a local resident i think the council does a fine job. you really cant expect them to respond imediately to your every little insignificant report of yours when there are definately more pressing issues for them to attend to.
the park gets regularly cleaned of graffiti and the rubbish around is usually picked up within a few days.
if you dont want your kids to 'frolick' in such an environment, dont take them there! its as simple as that. even better why dont you clean everything yourself, you have as much of a responsiblity to do it as the council does and all you seem to be doing is complaining to them and anyone who will listen about the state of the park and the way it is handled.

do you seriously have no life?

Actually, I have a very nice life.  The point I have been trying to make here for the last 9 months is that doing this sort of stuff does not take much time - no more than a few minutes per day at most.  If you can't be bothered reporting something because you are worried it will take hours, all I can say is relax, it won't.  Just have a go.  Even if it does take an hour the first time, what is more fulfilling - seeing your local park tidied up, or watching an episode of the Bold and the Beautiful?

of course there are some problems within the park and as a local resident i think the council does a fine job. you really cant expect them to respond imediately to your every little insignificant report of yours when there are definately more pressing issues for them to attend to.

I think Council does a fine job too, and I've told them that quite a few times.  I don't expect them to respond immediately to things like rubbish in a park, but I do expect a quick response when there is a clear safety hazard in a public space - such as a huge slab of broken glass on the footpath.  When I contacted Council the next morning (when they opened for business), they saw it as a serious problem and took care of it immediately.  I didn't tell them to do that - they figured that out for themselves.

As for more pressing issues to attend to, kindly list what you think they are and we can debate them.  

the park gets regularly cleaned of graffiti and the rubbish around is usually picked up within a few days.

The only reason the park is regularly cleaned of graffiti is because residents report it to Council, which is what this blog is all about - don't sit back and think that Council will magically find out about it - report it yourself.  Council do not send the graffiti truck to the park every Monday morning to remove graffiti because that's just what they do - they send the graffiti truck in response to a report by a resident.  If no reports come in, then the truck doesn't get sent.  Simple. 

if you dont want your kids to 'frolick' in such an environment, dont take them there! its as simple as that. even better why dont you clean everything yourself, you have as much of a responsiblity to do it as the council does and all you seem to be doing is complaining to them and anyone who will listen about the state of the park and the way it is handled. 

'Frolic' is not spelt with a 'k'.  

As for not taking my kids there, it's a public park, and we residents pay our rates and charges to ensure that it is maintained in a safe and suitable condition.  Our rates pay for gardeners and so forth to mow the grass, trim the trees, weed the flower beds, plant new flowers each year and maintain the furniture and fittings in good order (such as painting or mending the park benches every few years etc).  Unfortunately, they also have to spend some of their time picking up rubbish that other people couldn't be bothered taking to a nearby bin, or fixing fittings that have been maliciously and deliberately wrecked by other people. 

I am quite happy to help out with keeping the park in good order, and I chased up Council last year to see what they were doing about forming a "Friends of Five Dock Park" group, which is part of their anti-graffiti strategy.  

I don't really get the rest of your point.  I am not "complaining" to Council - I am simply passing on information to them.  We had a councillor drop by for a drink tonight, and he said that he is always copping complaints from residents who want to know why such-and-such a problem has not been attended to, and when he asks, "Well, have you reported it?", the answer is generally, "You should have known about it and fixed it by now!"  

Tell me this - how on earth is Council supposed to find out a problem exists if no one tells them about it?  I bet this is a common refrain that you'd hear from members of councils right across this country - there are always those who expect others to do something for them, but never both to tell them what needs doing.  They're just looking for an excuse to complain, to vent, to take out their frustrations on others.

It's like the old saying - "If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"  My take on it is this - "If a graffiti tag is sprayed on a park bench, and no one reports it to Council, does it actually exist?"

-----------------------

I took this photo today of a quiet street near Neild Park.  The lawns and verges are all nearly trimmed, the gardens are beautiful and the road side trees all looked well cared for.  In Canada Bay, we have to mow our own verges (Leichhardt Council for instance mows the verges in their area, and badly if you ask me), so this pretty street scape looks this way due to the individual efforts of all the residents.  

No one has to tell them to maintain their gardens and mow their verges and sweep their footpaths - they do it because they have pride in their homes and in the street.  You could view this as an example of spontaneous order in action.  

I took this photo to demonstrate the different mindsets that people have - the residents of this street go out of their way to make it a pleasant place to live.  The person who left the comment above clearly has different ideas about how we should manage our affairs.

Coincidence?

In the last 5 weeks, I've written letters asking some rather uncomfortable questions about graffiti of our local MP, Angela D'Amore, and the Attorney General, John Hatzistergos.  At least the Attorney General's office has had the decency to acknowledge my letter (even though it took two weeks just for them to do that, which is an extraordinarily slow turnaround for things like this).  Angela D'Amore's office has done nothing after 5 weeks, which is verging on the rude.

Lo and behold, this story appeared in our local paper this week:

Drummoyne MP Angela D’Amore MP and Attorney General John Hatzistergos launched new laws at Abbotsford Thrifty Link that makes it an offence to carry a marker pen of etching implements with intent to deface property.

“It will be an offence to carry marker pens or etching implements for the purpose of committing graffiti vandalism,” Mr Hatzistergos said.

Angela D’Amore MP said: “The offence is part of a package of tough new laws to tackle the proliferation of unsightly graffiti tags, which deface suburbs and towns across NSW.”

“The community has had enough of having to repair damage left behind by this senseless crime,” said Mr Hatzistergos. 

Coincidence?

Or damage control?  

If I was a cynical man, I'd say that this was a PR attempt to "get on the front foot" with the media.  

The article goes on on with:

Mr Hatzistergos said the maximum penalties for graffiti offences had been standardised under the new legislation as follows:

Fines of $2,200 or 6 months’ jail for damaging or defacing premises or property

Fines of $1,100 or 3 months’ jail for possessing any instrument, including etching equipment or marker pens, intended for use in defacing or damaging premises or property;

Enabling courts to continue to impose community service work on graffiti vandals

“Offenders who inflict serious damage on property will still be able to be charged with malicious damage under the Crimes Act, which carries a maximum jail term of five years,” he said. 

There was a lot of fuss recently when Cheyane Back was jailed for 3 months after vandalising private property in Hyde Park.  I believe that a lot of fuss was made because this was an astoundingly rare event, and the general public was shocked that a vandal had finally been sent to jail.

I don't see the point in imposing harsher penalties for graffiti - simply because the existing penalties are applied so rarely.  Research tells us that most vandals are aged under 18 - how many magistrates are going to send 14 year old kids to jail for 3 months for tagging?  None are doing it today, and I suggest that even with the harsher penalties, none will do it in future.  Note that although harsher penalties were announced, no announcement was made about providing additional prison places - because there is clearly no expectation that they will be required.

This is a Claytons announcement, and a Claytons policy, and I see it having next to no impact on graffiti.  

Perseverance

If there is one quality that you need in this game, it's perseverance.  Tenacity. Doggedness. Dedication.  Persistence.  Without these, you'll get nowhere.

If you've read some of my earlier postings, you'll find that dealing with government requires a certain amount of bloody-mindedness.  Jolting apathetic institutions out of their peaceful slumber is not something that can be achieved with a single phone call or email.  

If you have something in your neighbourhood that needs cleaning up, and you are interested in tackling your local council or government authority and encouraging them to do something about it, then my only advice is to prepare for a long period of trench warfare.  If you don't have the backbone to endure a bit of a struggle, you'll probably find yourself giving up at the first hurdle.  Before you start, prepare yourself mentally for a prolonged campaign.  Don't expect success at your first attempt, or even your second.  Be prepared to follow up every week or two.  

Get used to the idea of dealing with some public servants who have no interest in serving the public, and who will only get off their backside and do something when forced to do so.

Perseverance.  Let that be your middle name.

Action Angela

It is now five weeks since I wrote to our local MP, Angela D'Amore about graffiti around Drummoyne Public School, and I have not heard anything in reply.

In that time, the school has been cleaned up - but only because my compadre wrote to the Director-General of the Department of Education and took the matter up with him.

Members of Parliament are provided with staff, an office and a postal allowance so that they can communicate with the electorate and respond to concerns that are raised via correspondence. In this case, I'm not sure how the staff and postal allowance are being used, but it doesn't seem to be applied very often to responding to residents.

Over the last 9 months, I've written well over two dozen letters to a variety of departments, councils, councillers and MPs (state and federal); and the only one that has not responded is Angela D'Amore. Her office may have struck the same problem that they did last time I wrote - they replied to the wrong address because they didn't bother paying attention to the return address that I provided with my letter.

The generally accepted rule with correspondence from MPs is that if it is going to take more than a week to pen a response, an acknowledgement letter is sent out straight away. If a response has still not been written several weeks later, then a follow up letter is sent stating that a response is still being worked on, and will be forthcoming in due course. That ensures that you aren't left in the dark, wondering if you letter ever made it through.

So far though, I've recieved nothing. No acknowledgement letter and no response. Maybe I've made it onto some sort of Tripodi black list?

Guerilla gardeners

I watched with some interest the first episode of Guerilla Gardeners this week.  Apart from the editor or producer of the show over-egging the "this is really risky" angle of their work, I thought it was pretty good.  

Over the last year, I've poked my nose into some pretty blighted and neglected sites around Canada Bay, and if we were to wait for government at any level to beautify them, we'd be waiting several lifetimes.  No government ever has enough money and staff to beautify every rubbish covered, graffiti strewn, poorly tended vacant block.  I find it annoying that government departments continually proclaim that only they are capable of looking after the public realm; and then they turn around and plead that they are too poor/too understaffed/too busy to do anything - but if you dare to try and do something about it, you'll be dragged before a magistrate..

In my opinion, we the public entrust our elected officials and public servants with the care of public assets.  We pay rates, taxes, fees and charges for the upkeep of those assets, and for paying the wages and salaries of the officials appointed to maintain them.

We empower the government to do things on our behalf.  If the government, or its servants, fails in those undertakings, then it loses the moral authority to prevent the citizenry from undertaking those tasks themselves.

So as far as I am concerned, all power to the guerillas!

No, I haven't given up

Posting has slowed down considerably for two reasons - the lousy weather of late has kept most people cooped up indoors, vandals included.  The other is that I don't see a lot of point in constantly repeating the same things again and again.  

I'm still reporting things as I find them, and the success rate in getting things cleaned up is still pretty good, but I'm not necessarily going to blog about getting yet another bus shelter cleaned up when I've already written about half a dozen other examples over the last year.

Clean Up Australia Day is coming up on 1 March.  If you are thinking of participating, may I suggest that you consider doing a clean up on more than just one day of the year.  I like to think of every day as Clean Up Australia Day, and I'd encourage you to do the same.  

Any intelligent fool can invent further complications

This quote seems to apply to a lot of current government policy:

"Any intelligent fool can invent further complications, but it takes a genius to retain, or recapture simplicity". E.F. Scumacher.

"Complexity increases in accordance with the number of people who have time to promote it".

Bureaucrats in the Education Department could learn a lot from those two statements. The Departmental policy for removing graffiti appears to have been made as complex as possible by bureaucrats with plenty of time on their hands, and far removed from the front line; and then foisted on unsuspected Principals who are exceptionally busy, and have to then find the time to read and understand the policies, and then also find the time to jump through numerous hoops when they need something cleaned.

Maintaining our unnatural environment

Many people have a great deal of interest in preserving and maintaing our natural environment - jungles, forests, coral reefs, beaches, mountain ranges and so on.  Some have a great deal of interest in preserving our heritage environment - old buildings and bridges and so on.  However, not many profess an interest in maintaining what I call our "unnatural environment", or our current "built environment".  

Our unnatural environment is mainly made up of bricks and mortar, glass and tarmac, steel and aluminium, plus manicured lawns, flower beds, hedges and trees.  It is an environment shaped and managed by Man.  

Again, many people care deeply about looking after the private aspects of this environment - they renovate their houses, obsess over their gardens and polish their cars, but they care much less about the public aspects of this environment - bridges, tunnels, pathways, street furniture, public schools, public hospitals, light poles and utility assets (such as telephone booths, letter boxes, power substations and water or sewerage pumping stations).

This environment is the "forgotten environment", ignored, neglected and generally treated as a problem for someone else to solve.

But they are not somebody else's problem.  We pay for these assets with our rates and taxes, we pay council employees and public servants and managers of government owned enterprises to take care of them, and we should expect to get value for money from them.  

This blog is about providing that some people care about these things, and that we will hold those who are entrusted with looking after them to account.  When we see a problem, we will not look the other way and hope that it goes away - we will not continue to treat these things as somebody else's problem.

Mangling the flag

This hastily taken photo shows how the Police in Five Dock are treating the state flag.  There is a tree opposite the entrance to the station, and it has needed trimming for over 12 months.  As the tree is on council land, the council has to do the trimming - but the council won't do anything unless someone points out that this tree is a problem, and needs cutting back.

The flag regularly gets tangled in the tree like this, and sometimes it doesn't get hauled down for days.  I've put in a request to council (twice) to have the tree trimmed back enough to allow the flag to fly freely.  However, it's a crying shame that the Police of all people seem to have no idea how to treat our flag.

I might have to send away for a booklet on flag etiquette on behalf of our local Police.

Flying the flag

• The flag should be raised briskly and lowered ceremoniously.
• The flag should be raised no earlier than first light and lowered no later than dusk.
• When the flag is raised or lowered, or when it is carried in a parade or review, everyone present should be silent and face the flag. People in uniform should salute.
• The flag should always be flown freely and as close as possible to the top of the flagpole with the rope tightly secured.
• Unless all flags are raised and lowered simultaneously, the Australian National Flag should be raised first and lowered last.
• When the Australian National Flag is flown with flags of other nations, all flags should be the same size and flown on flagpoles of the same height
• When flying with only one other national flag, the Australian National Flag should fly on the left of a person facing the flags.
• Two flags should not be flown from the same flagpole.
• The flag may be flown at night only when it is illuminated.
• The flag should never be flown if it is damaged, faded or dilapidated. When the material of a flag deteriorates it should be destroyed privately and in a dignified way. i.e it may be cut into small unrecognisable pieces then disposed of with the normal rubbish collection.
• The flag should not be flown upside down, even as a signal of distress.
• The flag should not fall or lie on the ground or be used as a cover (although it can be used to cover a coffin at a funeral).
• Information on the protocols for displaying and folding the flag can be found in Part 2 of the booklet Australian flags (PDF 928KB) , which is available from your Federal Member of Parliament or Senator.

After reading that last line, I've contacted the office of our Federal Member, John Murphy MP, and asked them to send the Police Station a copy of the flag booklet.  

Is three months jail fair for graffiti?

There was a bit of a stir this week when 18 year old Cheyane Back was sent to prison for 3 months for scrawling a tag on a cafe.

I usually refrain from commenting on the laws that we have in place, how they are policed and the sorts of punishments that magistrates hand down - and I will continue to uphold that policy.

Cheyane thought it was overkill that she should go to prison for scrawling a single tag - '2shie'.  However, this ignores the fact that for years, the Police have been building up a state wide database of graffiti tags, with the aim of tracking those vandals that are prolific taggers.  What the media has not  told us is whether evidence was tendered in court from this database, and whether '2shie' is a common sight in her neighbourhood.  The story would take on a different complexion if her tag is all over the database like a rash.

From what I have seen over the last 6 months around Canada Bay, it's clear that there are some vandals who have painted their tags hundreds of times across their patch.  They return to some sites again and again, painting their tag as often as possible.  They seem to have a deep psychological need to get their tag onto as many spots as possible, like an obsessive-compulsive disorder.  Frankly, when she says:

"But I'll never do anything like it again. I would clean it off, I'll apologise, I'll do anything. I was shocked and scared," she continued.

I don't believe her.  Giving up graffiti seems to be as hard as giving up smoking.  Vandals are hooked on it, as it provides a frequent adrenaline fix.  

It's hard to fully prosecute these sorts of cases if the Police graffiti database is incomplete.  The great majority of graffiti attacks probably go unreported and unrecorded - property owners simply paint over the vandalism and move on.  However, given that the government has setup an Anti-graffiti team, and that team includes all the major utilities, and the Police are doing their best to populate the database with information, it seems futile if some government authorities are not co-operating and are not passing on graffiti intelligence to the Police.  At the very least, you'd expect government agencies to follow government policy in this regard.

I am going to make further enquiries this week as to whether the government agencies concerned (Energy Australia, Sydney Water etc) are indeed reporting every instance of graffiti to the Police. I know that RailCorp are doing it, so I won't bother with them.  However, I'll be shocked and disappointed if I find that Energy Australia are not reporting vandalism as they should.

No-action Angela

The saga of trying to get graffiti removed from Drummoyne Public School continues.  On 13 January - over 2 weeks ago - I wrote to our local MP, Angela D'Amore.  So far, I've heard nothing in return, and the school is still covered in graffiti.

13 January 2009

Ms Angela D’Amore MP

Member for Drummoyne

128 Great North Road

Five Dock NSW 2046

Dear Ms D’Amore

Failure to remove graffiti from Drummoyne Public School

In August 2008, I noticed that graffiti had been sprayed in several locations on the boundary fences around Drummoyne Public School.  I emailed the school on 22 August and asked that it be removed (email attached).  I am aware of the process that public schools have to follow, having been introduced to it when I reported graffiti at Five Dock Public School on two occasions in May and July 2008.

In September 2008, as the graffiti was still there, I wrote to the Principal of Drummoyne Public (letter attached).  

As the graffiti had still not been removed in November, I rang the Department of Education and spoke to the Project Manager responsible for this sort of work – I dealt with him on both occasions when Five Dock was vandalised.  He said he’d look into it.

I went past Drummoyne Public again yesterday and not only was the graffiti still there, but a new security fence has been erected in front of some of the graffiti, making it impossible to remove (and the graffiti is still visible).

Photos and commentary can be viewed at:

http://notsep.blogspot.com/search/label/Schools

When I wrote to the school in September, I also contacted the RTA and asked them to remove graffiti from all the road signs around the school.  That was taken care of within a week.

My personal view is that the failure to remove the graffiti from the school grounds before erecting a new security fence is a debacle of the first order, particularly after I had told the school and the Education Department about it on three separate occasions over a four month period.  

I note that on 26 June 2008, you made the following statement in Parliament:

Ms ANGELA D'AMORE: The member for Castle Hill referred to my comments on graffiti. Any commander you speak to will tell you that one of the crime prevention strategies with graffiti is to actually report it and remove it within 24 hours.

Back on 4 September 2003, there was a debate in parliament in regard to an amendment to the Local Government Act 1993, the aim being:

“to enable a local council to recover from a public authority expenses incurred by the council for the removal of graffiti from property owned or occupied by a public authority; and to order the removal of graffiti from property owned or occupied by a public authority. The provisions of the bill will apply where graffiti is visible from a public place, the public authority does not agree to have the graffiti removed, and the graffiti removal work cannot be carried out from a public place. In addition, failure to comply with an order will be an offence.”

You voted against that amendment.

Over the past year, I have witnessed first hand the speed and effectiveness of the Canada Bay anti-graffiti team in removing graffiti from private and public property.  Where they are able to, they often have it removed within 24 hours of a report being made.

I want you to answer two questions for me.

Question 1.

Given your public statement in Parliament on 26 June 2008 that the best way to deter graffiti is to remove it within 24 hours, what are you going to do to ensure that the Department of Education complies with this idea in future?  

Please don’t bother to try and explain the debacle of why graffiti was not removed from school property before a fence was built in front of it, even though it was reported three times prior to construction starting.  

Question 2.

Comment - graffiti removal is clearly not a core business of the Department of Education.  It is not a priority either.  If it was, the staff of the Department (teachers and principals) would be reporting graffiti instead of members of the public!  They work at these schools – how can they go past this graffiti every day and take no notice of it? (This is a rhetorical question – please don’t try to answer it.)

Graffiti removal is an activity that many Councils take seriously, particularly Canada Bay.  That being the case, and given the woeful response of the Department of Education on many occasions to remove graffiti from its premises, if an amendment to the Local Government Act 1993 was raised again (along the lines of the amendment that was debated on 4 September 2003), would you support it this time?  

Yours sincerely

As I said, there has been no response so far - not even an acknowledgement letter, which normally gets sent out a day or so within receipt of the letter.  Even if she doesn't want to respond, the least she could do is have one of her staff chase up the Education Department and have the graffiti removed.  Then again, last time I tried to contact her office, that turned into a debacle of the first order as well.  You have to wonder sometimes what some politicians do with their postage allowances.

Next stop - the Minister for Education.  

7 February 2009

The Hon. Verity Firth MP

Minister for Education and Training

Level 31

Governor Macquarie Tower

1 Farrer Place

SYDNEY NSW 2000

Dear Ms Firth

Failure to remove graffiti from Drummoyne Public School

Please see the attached letter to your colleague, and my local MP, Angela D’Amore.  Ms D’Amore seems to have dropped off the radar, so can you please ensure that the graffiti on the walls surrounding Drummoyne Public School is removed.

You might also want to look into simplifying the graffiti reporting and removal process – the current process is so convoluted and time consuming, it’s no wonder Principals fail to follow it on occasions.

Yours sincerely

Cleaning and breaking

The following photos were taken around the Ryde area.  The first shows a cleanup crew in action along the river - this group were organised enough to have a rowboat that they used to collect rubbish from the water.  There were at least a dozen blokes walking along the river banks with large sacks, picking up rubbish as they went.  I passed piles of sacks that they had filled and stacked up awaiting collection.

A well organised bus, fitted out with all the tools required to clean up an area.  We could do with this visiting a few areas around Canada Bay.

Two examples of vandalised signage in the same area - most of the signs setup along the path that follows the river had been broken in a manner similar to this.

Or this.  

Lots of people walk or ride past these signs every week.  Most would notice that they've been maliciously damaged, and I suspect that most would also believe that the local council would magically find out about the damage via a mythical "eye in the sky", or something to that effect.  As far as I am concerned, the only way the council is going to find out about this sort of thing is if somebody tells them.