Page 1 Paper presented at the Pacific Rim Real Estate Society (PRRES) conference, Christchurch New Zealand January 2002. TOWARDS A DEFINITION OF PROPERTY RIGHTS John Sheehan* & Garrick Small # * National Native Title Spokesperson, Australian Property Institute, National Secretariat 6 Campion Street Deakin ACT 2600, and Member Land Tribunal, Level 9 Tank Street Brisbane. Queensland 4000. Email : sarasan@ihug.com.au # Senior Lecturer, University of Technology, Sydney, Property Studies Program. Email: garrick.small@uts.edu.au, garricks@optusnet.com.au ABSTRACT The notion of property rights has undergone fundamental change recently as a result of the commodification of natural resources such as water and biota. All property rights result in the conferral of three qualities or capacities, namely a management power, and ability to receive income or benefits, and an ability to sell or alienate the interest. However the transition from open access to property rights for natural resources has drawn attention to just how we define whether “particular rights” are in fact property rights. Property in the more familiar sense of land and buildings conveys a tenor of regularity, constancy, and fixity – this is not so with the new forms of property which are inherently sui generis. As knowledge is gained as to the nature of these less familiar property rights accepted truths regarding the notion of property rights are being shown to be only partial and incomplete visions. KEYWORDS Property rights; property; water property rights; biota property rights INTRODUCTION Mario Vargas Llosa, a Peruvian novelist recently observed that while the discipline most closely associated with globalisation is economics, other disciplines related to matters social, ethical and cultural act as reminders that regional cultures remain surprisingly robust, pointing out that: