All the major religions say stealing is wrong, but in a messy world of disadvantage and exploitation, is the morality of theft always clear cut?

In certain instances, theft can be an act of desperation or poverty or the by-product of intergenerational trauma. 

And many colonised nations, such as Australia, are arguably built on theft: of land, language, artefacts and people.

According to Anne Pattel-Gray, a Bidjara/Kari Kari woman, theologian and author, Christianity has been used as justification for theft, even though it contradicts the biblical commandment “Thou shalt not steal”. 

She draws a connection between colonial ideology and the Book of Joshua.

It defines Yahweh [the name for the God of the Israelites] “as the colonial God giving the chosen people, the Israelites, the right to take possession, to steal the Canaanites’ land and to commit genocide, to wipe them off the planet,” Dr Pattel-Gray explains.

“This is the context that we have in Australia.”

She points to the Stolen Generations as an example.

“Consider the theft of generations of Aboriginal children that [the Australian] government committed, and institutionalisation of those children, most of them given to churches to train up to be indentured labour in this country,” Dr Pattel-Gray says.

“We don’t want to [say] that we had slavery in this country. We don’t want to acknowledge that we treated children as property to benefit those that were of the dominant society and wealth.”

Senator Lidia Thorpe shone a light on this tension during King Charles III’s visit to Australia in October.

Wearing a possum-skin cloak, she shouted to the monarch, “You are not our king” and “This is not your land”, as he sat on stage a few metres away.

While her remarks, and the nature of her protest, received varying reactions from First Nations people, Senator Thorpe put the idea of theft back into public discourse.

“If we look at Australia, the land was stolen, and now [those who stole it are] the dominant [society] defining the rules of what theft is,” Dr Pattel-Gray says.

“[The government] want to legislate around what theft is, but not acknowledge the greater theft that took place.”

Why the notion of private property took off

Tim Dean, a senior philosopher at the Ethics Centre and honorary associate at the University of Sydney, agrees there is a “deep hypocrisy” with this framework of colonialism.

He points to English philosopher John Locke as a key contributor to the Western understanding of what constitutes private property.

“He evoked the idea that God gave the world to man,” Dr Dean says.

“That was a justification used by many different Western cultures coming into other lands where Indigenous people lived, to say, ‘Look, this land is unused, therefore it is up for grabs.'”

The rise of agriculture went hand-in-hand with the need for property ownership.

“Populations get larger, wealth increases, inequality increases, resources become more fixed in location, [and] fences go up,” Dr Dean explains.

“It’s at that time where people are interacting with strangers more. You need to have rules regulating how you interact to enable cooperation.”

Of course, different cultures have had varying relationships with the land and its resources.

Since long before colonisation, First Nations people have had a deep relationship with country.  

“Geographically, land was bestowed upon us by the creator and through our ancestors,” Dr Pattel-Gray says.

Each language group would have specific land, she explains, with sacred sites and rivers indicating boundaries.

“We understood the concept of having a relationship with country that was your responsibility, whereas someone else’s country, you had no relationship to it and could not relate to it or sing to it or do ceremonies on it,” Dr Pattel-Gray says.

“So the concept of theft was vastly different, because we wouldn’t have an interest in stealing someone else’s land because it was a particular language that went with that land.”

Is theft ever justified?

In Australia, the possession of land isn’t just about having a place to live or run a business.

Property ownership is also a wealth generation tool.

“If I have something in my possession or I have control over that, and I can choose how it is used, who uses it … I can choose to prevent other people from gaining access to it,” Dr Dean says.

“There are all of these incentives for me to hoard property, to hold on to it as much as possible.”

But this can pose moral challenges — as can hoarding the goods derived from the land.

For example, if a farmer ends up with an oversupply of fruit or vegetables — perhaps, due to a bumper crop, or supermarket supply agreements or specifications — it can be cheaper to “dump” the crop.

Dr Dean says that owners have every right to defend or dispose of their property as they see fit. 

“But the incentive for theft grows when there’s great inequality, some who have little or none and some who have much,” he points out.

“Now, of course we want to respect the concept of property, and we don’t like theft, but there are more important things here, like fairness and survival.”

What about greed?

While greed may be a vice, it’s not a crime, like theft.

Dr Dean says we can thank another British philosopher, Adam Smith, for this.

“[He] talked about the idea of modern economics being driven by desire,” Dr Dean explains.

“If I am greedy and I want more, then we have a framework of economics — or capitalism — where I work harder, I produce more stuff to earn more money so I can buy more stuff.

Dr Pattel-Grey believes there is no moral justification for greed.

Yet, in contemporary society, she says “we bless and glorify it”.

“It is the haves against the have-nots in our world, you know; there are so many that are struggling to put food on the table, and yet there are so many that have enormous wealth,” she says. 

“When there are so many people going without, why not share that wealth and that property with others who could utilise it?

“You’re really getting into a religious morality question, and the law cannot be so black and white in its application.”

As social standards morph and evolve, so do our perceptions of theft.

Acts that were considered serious to one generation, such as stealing a loaf of bread, may be seen in a completely different light by another. 

Conversely, theft that was previously deemed “acceptable” in the West, such as the colonisation of Indigenous land or the removal of artefacts, is now deemed deeply objectionable.

For Dr Dean, there are “empathetic failings” in our current legal and political system, but he points to substantial changes that have been made.

“Look at the way that punishments have changed for theft over the last 200 or 300 years. People were sent to Australia from England for what we would consider today to be very minor examples of theft,” he says.

“Today, they would be punished perhaps even through community service or rehabilitation.

“There can be an empathy towards the circumstances that drive somebody towards theft.

“There can be a sense of concern and an idea that we want to rehabilitate … [because] a less unequal society is a society where there’s less theft.”