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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-09-24 Daily Xml
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REPAY SA

The Hon. B.V. FINNIGAN (14:56): Will the Minister for Correctional Services provide some details of the launch of Repay SA?

The Hon. CARMEL ZOLLO (Minister for Correctional Services, Minister for Road Safety, Minister for Gambling, Minister Assisting the Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (14:56): I thank the honourable member for his important question. Offender Community Service in South Australia now has a new name: Repay SA.

I attended the official launch with the Premier and the Attorney-General at Elizabeth last week. Repay SA sends a distinct message to everyone that offenders undertaking community service orders in our state will address their behaviour and they will pay for their crime by giving something back to the community. Repay SA is restorative justice in action. The government believes this program shows respect for victims of crime and also guarantees that offenders will themselves repay the damage that they have caused.

In the 2007-08 financial year over 1,800 community service orders were commenced, and this equates to in excess of 135,000 hours of community service. This represents an overall approximate dollar value of more than $2 million.

Repay SA is central to the government's newly enhanced and extended graffiti removal program, now known as detag. Detag is an appropriate name for the graffiti removal program, because tagging is a form of graffiti where someone illegally writes (usually with spray paint) their individualised signature on public places. I know we all agree that tagging is a blight on our community. So, I think it is fair to say that, if someone is caught tagging, they will almost certainly end up spending a good number of hours detagging as part of a Repay SA community service order.

Addressing the problem of graffiti vandalism has been a longstanding commitment of this government. As part of the 2006 election campaign, the Rann government made a pledge to extend the Southern Region Graffiti Removal Program to the north-eastern suburbs, and funding of $543,000 has been provided until 2010-11 for the Repay SA detag program.

An action plan is currently being implemented to manage the program, with Repay SA community service coordinators in place in the southern, western and northern suburbs. I am pleased to inform the chamber that one coordinator and an additional supervisor have been appointed in the southern metropolitan suburbs to organise and supervise the removal of graffiti.

Graffiti will never disappear altogether, but with the new graffiti removal program, detag, we are well equipped to make sure that those who are caught defacing the community will spend a significant amount of time repairing the damage they have done through Repay SA and the detag program.

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