THEY ARE VANDALS

First up a big thank you to 3AW listeners for the ratings result today which saw the Hinch program back at Number One with one of the biggest ratings figures we have had in several years. After a year smattered with illness and other hassles it’s great to be back on track for a positive 2007.

So, to start today with a negative. When are our courts going to take graffiti seriously? When are they going to treat it for what it is. Vandalism. Pure and simple. Destructive, anti-social behaviour. It costs millions of dollars to repair the damage done on trains on trams on walls, on buildings by louts with spray cans. They are NOT artists. They are vandals. And what makes it worse after our courts treat them with kid gloves is that they rejoice and jeer and laugh at the courts and at the system.

Just take a look at the photo on Page Three of the Melbourne Herald Sun today. There’s Sydney vandal Derek Allen aged 22 laughing and gesticulating, full of bravado, after a magistrate let him walk.

And he told journos: ‘You should be publicising me as a hero. We are all heroes. We want to have our say.’

Earlier this month three other New South Wales vandals walked free after admitting to a wave of train vandalism attacks.

Derek Allen used bolt cutters to break into the railway siding at Carrum. He had 15 cans of spray paint, a disguise and a video camera to record his planned trail of destruction. Presumably to boast to his mates.

Magistrate Christine Stewart-Thornton convicted him and fined him $1000 even though he’s done it before. In March last year he was given a bond for defacing a tram sign in St. Kilda.

To make it worse somebody was telling porkies in court Allen’s lawyer, Lynne Amad, told  Frankston Magistrate’s Court that her client was ‘quite a well-known artist’.  Well-known to whom? Other social deadbeats?

And she said: ‘He comes to Melbourne about eight or nine times a year and he is about to begin work for a Melbourne council to paint a mural at a St. Kilda underpass’.

Funny, according to Port Phillip Council, that mural was finished about eight months ago and was worked on by about 150 people. The council certainly didn’t know Derek Allen’s name.

So what does he come here for? To touch up his so-called handiwork? To deface more trains and buildings? I just hope Centrelink has a look at him. Does he have a real job in Sydney? Is he drawing unemployment benefits?

Maybe it’s time he got a job decorating a small room for a month. A prison cell. An appropriate place for a self-styled hero.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2007