What is respect for property?

Respect for property in Australia is the social and legal expectation that people treat the belongings, land, and possessions of others as worthy of protection. The principle is embedded in criminal laws against theft, fraud, vandalism, trespass, and damage, in civil law remedies for interference with property, and in everyday social norms about borrowing, sharing, and using shared spaces.

Several legal regimes protect property. Criminal law in each state makes theft, robbery, burglary, fraud, arson, and damage to property punishable offences, with penalties scaling by value and circumstances. Civil law allows owners to sue for trespass to land or goods, conversion (intentionally dealing with another person's goods inconsistent with their rights), nuisance, and recovery of possession. Property registers maintained by state governments record land ownership, secured loans against personal property (through the Personal Property Securities Register), and intellectual property rights (through IP Australia).

Respect for property also operates at the level of social practice. Australians generally do not walk on private lawns, borrow without asking, or interfere with another person's vehicle. Public spaces are shared by convention: park bench seats are first-come-first-served, public barbecues are cleaned after use, library books are returned by the due date, and council kerbside collections of bulky waste do not generally attract scavenging in the way they might elsewhere. Aboriginal cultural respect for sacred sites, both on private and public land, is an important specific form of property respect with deep history.

Indigenous land rights have given respect for property a wider meaning over recent decades. The Mabo decision of 1992 recognised native title at common law for the first time, ending the legal fiction of terra nullius. The Native Title Act 1993 codified the protection. About 50 per cent of Australia is now subject to determined or claimed native title interests, and Indigenous Land Use Agreements operate alongside ordinary property law to manage co-existence between traditional owners and other land users. Respect for property is now widely understood to include respect for the country's First Peoples' continuing interests in land alongside the formal title system.