Future Directions for Australian Local Government

Abstract

This volume set out to examine some of the major contemporary issues confronting Australian municipalities at the start of the twenty-first century. Preceding chapters have considered various dimensions of Australian local government from several disciplinary perspectives, with individual contributions examining a range of concerns and policy dilemmas in some detail. Whereas these contributions offer specialist analyses of particular areas, the collection as a whole also provides a useful review of the transformation of the local government sector in recent years. This final chapter now attempts to draw together some of these insights and place them in the broader thematic context of future local governance in Australia. The chapter itself is divided into two main parts. In the next section we seek to assess the achievements of Australian local government over the recent past, especially in the areas of management, democracy and finance. By contrast, the final section concludes this volume by considering future directions that might assist in overcoming some of the problems raised. In particular, we discuss the potential significance of developing sound intergovernmental consultative bodies, encouraging the growth of regional organisations, enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of local government service delivery by entrenching the principle of comparative advantage in all of its operations, and stimulating more discourse and inquiry into local governance.