Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Local government
• Services delivered in competition with other providers:forarangeofreasons,local
governments choose to deliver services in competition with other providers.
Examples include child care, golf courses, caravan parks and commercial car
parks. These can also provide new revenue sources or generate additional
revenue.
• ‘Market gap’ services: particularly in rural areas, local governments often face
pressure to provide services that are economically unviable for the private
sector due to small population numbers, and there are no alternative providers.
Examples include medical clinics, aged care services and programs, airports,
saleyards, abattoirs and cemeteries. 42
Local government and place shaping
Placeshapingisaconceptthatillustratestheevolvingroleoflocalgovernmentsin
the context of citizens’ increased expectations of public services and an expanded
service-delivery task. Place shaping helps identify the special characteristics of
local places, such as neighbourhoods, so that action can be taken on economic,
social and environmental fronts to enhance the quality of these places and the life
of their people. 43 Itinvolvesthecreativeuseofpowertopromotethewellbeing
of a community, and may include building and shaping local identity, regulating
harmful and disruptive behaviours, and helping to resolve disagreements. 44
The introduction of place-based community planning across Australia, such as
the Integrated Planning and Reporting framework in NSW, can be viewed as an
effort to help local governments reconcile competing service-delivery demands. 45
Through place-based processes, local governments take a ‘whole of council – whole
of community’ view and perform a stronger role by engaging communities more
deliberatively in decisions about services, models of delivery and the inevitable
trade-offs required between community expectations and regulatory and funding
constraints. These processes not only shape what gets delivered but also educate
communities about the increasingly complex service-delivery task facing local
governments. Place-based processes appear to be changing community perceptions
of local government. For example, respondents to one survey identified place-based
planning for the future as one of the most important functions of local governments
in Australia. 46 This represents a clear departure from historical perceptions of local
governments as providers of services to property.
42 Independent Local Government Review Panel 2012, 7.
43 McKinlay et al. 2011, 4; Rablen 2012, 303–5.
44 Lyons 2007, 3.
45 Office of Local Government n.d.
46 Ryan et al. 2015.
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