The work of acclaimed street artist Banksy can attract global interest when it appears on city streetscapes and be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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But if Banksy decided to come to Queensland, he could expect Brisbane City Council officers to quickly paint over the valuable artwork.
And Lord Mayor Graham Quirk, who announced the 2016 prosecution rate for his Taskforce Against Graffiti at a northside skate park on Thursday, said he would not have it any other way.
"If Banksy had come to town, we would treat it in exactly the same way as Lister was treated," Cr Quirk said, referring to a 2014 incident in which council officers buffed away an Anthony Lister piece, that would have been worth thousands of dollars, in Elizabeth Street.
"That is to say that we would welcome them to come and have the conversation with us, so we could organise something that is an authorised piece of work.
"We accept that they are great artists, but it doesn't give anyone the right to go around on other people's properties and simply paint."
When it was pointed out that the appeal of Banksy's art was its guerilla, unauthorised modus operandi, Cr Quirk remained firm.
"It may be an appeal in other parts of the world, but we do not have any tolerance at all towards unauthorised work here. That's just the position we've taken," he said.
"What's the difference between him and someone else who wants to do unauthorised work? Then it becomes a question of beauty being in the eye of the beholder in terms of that work.
"We want a law that works for everybody. Everyone's treated the same.
"Everyone might think they're a great artist as well, but we want to do it in a very organised way."
Cr Quirk said the taskforce, a partnership between the council and the Queensland Police Service, charged 115 suspected vandals with 5260 offences in 2016.
He said it cost the city about $4 million a year to combat graffiti throughout the suburbs.
"Seven years ago, we had around 140,000 tags a year. This year, 78,000. It's not the best result we've had – we had a better result the year before – but what we have seen is that, over time, that number has come down," Cr Quirk said.
"We want to continue to make sure we get people engaged to help us, to give us the information we need to get that graffiti cleaned up quickly."
The council had 11 teams cleaning graffiti across Brisbane, which Cr Quirk said had made a visible impact on the city's aesthetic.
"There is a lot of senseless graffiti that occurs. It is not street art – it is simply tagging and vandalism within the graffiti activities," he said.
"What we want is a city that looks good. We often get comments from people who come from other places, how clean and tidy Brisbane is and part of that is the fact that we do clean up graffiti very quickly through the taskforce."
While the program had been successful, taskforce member Detective Sergeant Nadim Matta said it had also had a noticeable effect on neighbouring council areas.
"Because we're policing it in the Brisbane City Council area, it's pushed it out."
In Brisbane, however, Sergeant Matta said the taskforce had been a worthwhile exercise.
"If the partnership wasn't going and we weren't prosecuting offenders, the situation would be a lot worse than it is," he said.
Cr Quirk said council officers acted as intelligence gatherers for the police.
"Before our taskforce cleans the graffiti off, it's scanned and that information then is gathered and is given to the police to assist them in their investigations," he said.
"So when I say that we've had 115 graffitists charged on over 5300 offences, it's because the collection of the scanned tags allowed us to know they had committed multiple offences."
Cr Quirk's announcement came as the Brisbane Street Arts Festival was in full swing.
The council sponsored the festival through the Brisbane Powerhouse, but Cr Quirk said that did not send mixed messages.
"The Street Arts Festival is an organised festival, it's an authorised festival, and it's done with the right approvals," he said.
"What I'm saying is we will never accept a free-for-all where people think they can just graffiti any time they want."
Street art without such approval would have a short shelf life, the Lord Mayor said.
"We want to get to it quickly but we also want to drive home the message to graffitists that your work is not going to be hanging around for everyone to see forever," Cr Quirk said.
"We're going to get in and clean it up."
And that included Banksy.
Brisbane's top five graffiti hot-spots
- South Brisbane - 2518 tags
- West End - 2036
- Woolloongabba - 1702
- Kangaroo Point - 1314
- Paddington - 1246
