Thursday, 24 March 2022

Eastern Freeway graffiti

Mr R SMITH (Warrandyte) (09:40): I want to raise an issue today in the house on the state of the Eastern Freeway with regard to the graffiti. Members in this chamber who travel up the Eastern Freeway would have seen the growing amount of graffiti and the weeds that are springing up along the centre of the freeway, but it is getting to the point now where the eastern gateway to our city is a complete disgrace. I have raised this in the house before, so the minister cannot say that he does not know what is going on. I can only conclude there are two possibilities with why that graffiti is not getting removed: one is that the government has just run out of money and they cannot afford to do anything about it, and the second is they simply do not care.

Members of the Labor Party might think it is great street art, but the fact of the matter is it is an unsightly blight on, as I said, the eastern entrance to our city. I think that when you compare this publicly managed part of the freeway with the bit that is managed by the private operator, ConnectEast, there is no graffiti past the tunnel and no graffiti where the private operator is looking after things, but where the government is looking after things we just have a complete mess. We have got signs that are covered in graffiti, and that area next to Alexandra Parade is so covered in graffiti that it is a complete disgrace.

I have had many members of the community come to me over the last year talking about it. I implore the minister: please go down and have a look at it, look at it for what it is, which is the result of a crime. Graffiti is not welcome in this city or this state. Do something about it, because it looks awful and it looks like we do not care about our city, and I would say that every member of this house does in fact care about our city. Let us demonstrate that pride that we have.