12:00a.m. 11th October 2008

| By Steve Zemek

Surface maintenance workers have a quicker painting method than the previous users of this “canvas”. Photo: Nicholas Falconer/178795

Anti-graffiti campaigners have called for mandatory jail sentences for vandals, as work began yesterday to cover up a graffiti-scrawled wall alongside the Sunshine Coast Motorway at Mooloolaba.

Resident Graeme Hall, who last month began a one-man mission to paint over graffiti on the motorway’s sound barriers, hailed the clean-up effort as a victory for people power.

The work – being done by contractors as a part of an agreement between the Sunshine Coast Regional Council and the state government – follows on from a promise by Main Roads minister Warren Pitt to beautify the graffiti hot spot.

The council’s manager of community services, Mike Lollback, said the painting work was the first in a series of projects being shared by the two governments to clean up the region.

Mr Hall said, however, the only way to deter vandals was to impose harsher penalties on offenders.

“The sentencing of a judge should not only be punishment for the law breaker, but it should also be a deterrent for would-be law breakers,” he said.

“If they had a mandatory jail term of 30 days on graffiti artists, they wouldn’t have a graffiti problem.

“And after all, the 30 days would be voluntary. If you didn’t want to go to jail, don’t paint on the walls.”

Mr Lollback said the council and state government were in the middle of negotiating an agreement to clean up graffiti and litter and maintain roads, using existing council contracts.

“We identified it (the Sunshine Coast Motorway) some months ago, and this was the basis of our negotiations with Main Roads,” he said.

“But certainly having it done as quickly as we had is Main Roads and council honouring the minister’s undertaking as quickly as we can.”

Mr Hall led the call for the government clean-up after volunteering his time to paint over the sound-barrier walls along the motorway, just south of the Buderim-Mooloolaba Road intersection. He said he was inundated with calls of support and offers to provide materials and money.

“I had a lady come up to me at dinner the other night and she said it (the graffiti) incites intimidation amongst the elderly,” he said.

“Because when they see the graffiti, they see it as meaning there’s a bad element on the Coast.

“I’d never thought of it that way.”