It seemed like a brilliant idea at the time. You're a politician campaigning on a clean-up Canberra platform, so why not, well, clean up Canberra?
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Twelve years ago, Liberal Assembly member Steve Pratt had exactly that idea. He found a wall with graffiti on it, so along he went with a scrubbing brush and a bevy of photographers.
Scrub, scrub, scrub, he went. Click, click, click, they went.
And, hey presto, political job done.
Except that the work he had obliterated had been commissioned by the government on an officially designated site.
A media circus ensued. Mr Pratt was pursued and pilloried.
The bizarre events have come back into focus because some of the graffiti artists involved have been reminiscing. One of them is back in town for an exhibition - and they met up.
"It just amused me that a politician could be such a ... politician," said Dan Maginnity, who had been commissioned by the ACT government to paint the mural in question.
And Mr Pratt has been reminiscing, too. It turns out that he is also a painter - of landscapes on paper and canvas, rather than walls.
He told The Canberra Times: "I don't regret it."
The offending mural was near the entrance to Woden cemetery.
"I had a look at it and I thought it was horrifying that the access to the cemetery should be adorned with this stuff, so I decided to take action," he said.
Mr Pratt was vilified at the time. A "comedy" program daubed graffiti on his own office door.
A Greens MLA likened Mr Pratt's act to the censorship used by Nazis and Communists.
"Perhaps he has forgotten that totalitarian and fascist regimes similarly claim the right to forcibly remove any expressions of culture or perspective that are different from their own," she opined.
Which was odd, because Mr Pratt himself was a former military officer who had served in some of the most dangerous parts of the world.
He was involved in humanitarian missions helping the victims of "totalitarian and fascist regimes".
He was imprisoned by the totalitarian Serbian regime during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
All the same, he lost his seat in the Legislative Assembly shortly after the graffiti cleaning episode.
The work which offended him was created by Dan Maginnity, who goes by the graffiti artist tag Byrd.
After his work was obliterated, he and a couple of other graffiti artists decided to paint another mural nearby - of Steve Pratt.
One of those artists was Luke "ELK" Cornish, who is back in Canberra for an exhibition of his work.
He is now a big name in the more formal art world. Despite that, he's just had a mural in Sydney defaced. He told The Canberra Times that what happened in Woden 12 years ago reminded him of the recent defilement.
"It's very similar to what's happening in Bondi. It's like history repeating itself," he said.
Mr Pratt said he had nothing against graffiti if it was done with the input of the community.
He, too, is an artist, he said.
But he still calls the painting he scrubbed over "bloody stuff".
"People visiting their loved ones in the cemetery didn't like it and neither did I."
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Steve Evans
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
