The Greens did not support the New Zealand Bill of Rights (Private Property Rights) Amendment Bill when it was first introduced and we do not support it now. It has been quite obvious from the beginning that we have perfectly good laws against theft now. We have perfectly good laws for compensation when the law takes one's land for some public purpose. Gordon Copeland says this legislation is based on the Judeo-Christian principle of "thou shalt not steal". Well, stealing is quite adequately provided for in the criminal law at the moment, and I do not see why that needs to become a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act issue.

How can we add to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act a right that has no agreed meaning, that has changed over the years and the centuries, and that will continue to change? It used to be a property right for men to beat their wives. If that right had been enshrined in a Bill of Rights Act at the time, where would that have left us? Until very recently it was regarded by many people as a property right to beat their kids. That is no longer the case, either. For much of our history women could not own property, at all; they had no property rights. So what exactly would we have been enshrining in a Bill of Rights Act then?

Rights conflict, they can never be absolute, and they are always relative to the rights of other people. Four hundred people a year have a right to clean air, but they die prematurely because somebody else thinks they have the right to operate a motor vehicle with a dirty exhaust. Whose rights are we enshrining in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act there? Are we enshrining the property right to use and enjoy the property of a motorcar over and above somebody else's right to life and health? I have a right to enjoy my property — the stereo — at 3 o'clock in the morning and to play my favourite music very loudly. But my next door neighbour has a right to peace and quiet. Does my property right to enjoy my stereo because it is a thing that I own override my neighbour's right to a decent sleep, and perhaps to the health that depends on it? Should my neighbour compensate me if I am not allowed to play my stereo loudly at 3 o'clock in the morning, given that my stereo is a property, my neighbour's health is not actually property, and my neighbour's sleep is not property and is therefore not defined as a property right?

The nub of this debate is actually the often-claimed right to do what I like on my own land, and to enjoy my land by doing what I like on it because I own it. Well, that right has been increasingly circumscribed by law for very good reason for a long time. Do I have a right to clear and burn the forest on my land? Do I have a right to burn the tussock and the stubble? Are there some wider public rights that override my right to do what I like on my land? Do I have a right to exterminate rare species and to make whole species extinct because of my actions? Do I have a right to pollute the air and the water of those whose properties adjoin mine?

Hon Harry Duynhoven: No, because you've got a wider responsibility.

JEANETTE FITZSIMONS: Well, exactly. As the member says, there is a wider responsibility, but the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is not about responsibilities. It does not say anything about the responsibilities that go with those rights.

It is a good idea to have a Bill of Rights Act. It is very important to protect the right to life, the right to liberty, the right to free speech, and those other personal rights. But when we get to property rights we are dealing with a very confused and conflicting issue where people's rights conflict with other people's rights, and where property in this respect could be seen as having a higher status than health or, in fact, life itself. There are many situations in the world where the right to property is held in law to override the right to life of other people, and I am glad we are not heading in that direction in New Zealand.