Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Local government
Local government and service delivery
Australia’s local governments have evolved beyond a narrow emphasis on ‘services
to property’ to promote the social, economic, environmental and cultural wellbeing
of the communities they govern. This has been a response to citizens’ rising
expectations of public services and the devolution of service-delivery tasks from
higher levels of government to local governments. 37 At the same time, local
government services have become subject to increased regulatory requirements
from other levels of government, particularly in core areas such as asset management,
land use planning and community planning. The costs of providing and
maintaining services have also increased faster than revenue.
The net effect has been that local governments now provide a wider range
and higher standard of services, such as sporting, cultural and community care
facilities, under increasing regulatory and financial constraints. These issues have
all contributed to the vastly increased complexity of local service delivery. 38
Recently, attempts have been made to make sense of this expanded and more
complex service-delivery task for contemporary local governments (see Table 1)
The ability to tailor services to meet local needs is one of the justifications
underpinning Australia’s more decentralised system of local government. 39 This
justification references the principle of subsidiarity, which is concerned with
ensuring service delivery is assigned to the lowest level of government capable
of performing the task, unless allocating to a higher level would achieve greater
efficiency and effectiveness. 40 Because Australia’s local governments are closest to
their communities, they have unique insight into local needs. They determine
service levels according to these needs as well as state, territory and national
regulatory and funding conditions. Therefore, in one way, local governments act
as subsidiary agents responsible for delivering services for state and territory
governments. Yet, in another way, they are also legal entities with elected political
bodies responsible for their communities. This creates a somewhat conflicted
relationship between local government and citizens: as well as being ‘voters’ and
‘ratepayers’, citizens are also ‘customers’.
The justification for local government has been questioned on the basis that,
in a globalising world, it is not possible to constitute a spatial community. Indeed,
commentators have pointed to vast differences between the colonial life that existed
when local government systems were established, and have argued that ‘advances
in modern communications made community governments based on the village
or suburb an outmoded entity’. 41 Further, because many public services are now
delivered and funded directly or indirectly by other tiers of government as well
37 O’Connor 2017.
38 See Walker and Gray 2012.
39 Colebatch and Degeling 1986.
40 Follesdal 1998.
41 Chandler 2010, 10.
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