Int'l "graffiti tourists" blamed for Aussie city's vandalism plague

Police have reluctantly dubbed Melbourne as the graffiti capital of Australia, and blamed international tourists for contributing to the ever-present problem.

On Monday, Victoria Police drew a clear distinction between Melbourne's beautiful, council-sponsored street graffiti and the costly scourge of amateur tagging.

Recent data shows Metro Trains spend around 7.25 million U.S. dollars cleaning up graffiti each year, while VicRoads (275,000 USD) and Melbourne City Council (580,000 USD) also pick up hefty bills annually.

Victoria Police sergeant Duncan Browne, from the unit's transit divisional response unit, told News Corp that Melbourne had become a target for graffiti tourists because of its previously relaxed attitude to removing it.

"Within Australia, Melbourne is the hotspot. It is the place for international graffitists to come. It is well known in the graffiti culture that Melbourne is the place to go," he said on Monday.

Browne said part of the problem was the prevailing perception among international graffiti crews that the people of Melbourne turned a blind eye to the practice.

"If you encourage graffiti in a certain area and street art culture, you have to accept there is some risk with that ... (the taggers) want to keep up their street cred and offend on trains and other illegal locations," he said.

Despite the amount of taxpayer money it spends on painting over unwanted tagging each year, Melbourne City Council backed residents to understand graffiti art's importance to the city and take the good with the bad.

"Hosier, Rutledge and Union lanes are known throughout the world as iconic street-art destinations and the heart of Melbourne's urban culture," a council spokesman told News Corp.

"While we recognize there is widespread concern about graffiti tagging in the municipality, there is a distinction between tagging and street art."

In a statement, Melbourne's Lord Mayor Robert Doyle agreed with the spokesman, saying "art is art" and "tagging is vandalism."

The council allows taggers to undertake experimental graffiti in some parts of Melbourne. But, in other areas, VicRoads has installed metal gantries where street signs have previously been vandalized, while Metro Trains has also been forced to make the interior of train carriages "tag-proof." Endit