Property Rights versus Environment? A critique of the coalition government’s approach to the reform of the Resource Management Act

The coalition government in New Zealand intends to repeal the Resource Management Act 1991 and replace it with new legislation ‘based on the enjoyment of private property rights, while ensuring good environmental outcomes’. This article considers the real possibility that the government is intending to place a theory of absolute private property rights at the centre of the new system. It argues that any policy that assumes private property rights should confer absolute rights on owners is a mischaracterisation of those rights and the law of private property. Making policy on a myth of absolute property rights is unlikely to result in good environmental outcomes.