The Gap Community Association

Following is a copy of a letter sent by The Gap Community Association (GCA) to Brisbane Lord Mayor, Campbell Newman, on the subject of graffiti in The Gap.

The Gap Community Association, represents residents in the suburb of The Gap, one of the largest suburbs in Brisbane with over 16,000 people living in the suburb according to the Brisbane City Council website.

The GCA has been lobbying for many years to try and have a building near the corner of Payne and Waterworks Roads, The Gap cleaned of the terrible graffiti that seems to be added to on an almost daily basis (refer to the photographs below).

We have been advised by our local police officer, Senior Sergeant Chris Pemberton that “graffiti attracts graffiti” and that one of the best strategies to reduce/avoid its reoccurrence is to get rid of it as soon as possible after it occurs.

We have tried to engage our local councillor, Geraldine Knapp, on the subject, however her advice is that as the building is unoccupied with an “absentee landlord“, there is nothing that can be done to clean up the graffiti.

Lord Mayor, we note that your own council provides rules and regulations on the signage that residents may place on their property in residential areas and we wonder how the owner of this building is able to get away with the appalling ’signage’ in the form of graffiti that has been present on his building for many years.

I was recently in Singapore, which is still regarded by Singaporeans as a ’second world’ country and our tour leader advised us that the owners of buildings in Singapore are required by law to repaint their buildings every five years.

We live in a ‘first world’ country and the best city in Australia and yet we are told that council is powerless to act!!

Surely, there is something that you as the Lord Mayor can do to rid our beautiful suburb of The Gap of this blight on our green, leafy environment such as repainting the building and sending the owner the bill.

GCA members would be more than happy to work with council in any way possible to remedy the situation.

Your comments in due course would be appreciated.

A.C. Barker,
Hon. Secretary, The Gap Community Association Inc.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 at 5:02 pm and is filed under Graffiti. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.