Melbourne's lord mayor will push for graffiti artists caught tagging in the CBD to face serious consequences, even if it means sending council staff to court to read victim impact statements. The council spends millions of dollars removing graffiti every year, but it's hoping to turn the tables with a new 'You spray, you pay' policy.
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00:00Whether it's art or vandalism, love it or hate it, there's plenty of graffiti in Melbourne.
00:07I think it's amazing. I think that it adds to the energy that you get here. I'm always
00:13really excited to see new things.
00:16Some people see it as a rite of passage. Frankly, I just see it as vandalism.
00:20Cleaning any graffiti in Melbourne City is a huge blow to the bottom line for the City
00:24Council, prompting a spray and a new plan from the Lord Mayor.
00:28It's costing us millions of dollars each year to clean up.
00:33Street art precincts like Hosier Lane will be immune, but the Council's putting other
00:37offenders on notice. Taking an activist approach by having an active role in court proceedings,
00:43making vandals pay for clean-up costs and pushing police to improve enforcement of graffiti
00:49laws.
00:50I want to see more prosecutions though. I want to see people caught and prosecuted for
00:56these crimes.
00:57Graffiti tags like these ones are only a metre or so wide, but to put it into scale, the
01:03Council says it cleaned almost 70,000 square metres of graffiti in 2021. That figure has
01:10only grown since then to more than 110,000 square metres in 2024, or five times the surface
01:18area of the MCG.
01:20From areas so covered in graffiti, it may as well be wallpaper.
01:24We're so used to it and we just see the whole art thing as such a feature of Melbourne and
01:30such a feature of Melbourne laneways.
01:32The measures were approved at a Council meeting last night and will come into effect in the
01:36coming weeks.