Improving Efficiency in Australian Local Government: Structural Reform as a Catalyst for Effective Reform

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1. Structural Reform in Australian Local Government “Amalgamation has always been the favoured Australian policy instrument for improving the efficiency of Local government. However, this policy consensus has flown against mounting evidence that amalgamation not only often fails to reduce costs, but also generates significant unintended negative...
2. The Implications of the Lyons Report into Local Government in England for Structural Reform in Australian Local Government “It is argued that the Lyons Inquiry adds weight to other work that questions the traditional reliance on amalgamation as the chief instrument of Australian local government reform.” The Lyons Inquiry into English local government presented its Final Report in...
3. Optimal approaches to structural reform in regional and rural local governance: The Australian experience “This paper argues that such reliance on the blunt instrument of municipal consolidation has been misplaced, not only because it is based on the mistaken premise that ‘bigger is better’ in local governance, but also because it ignores many other...
4. Structural Reform: Municipal Mergers “Structural reorganization using municipal mergers is a common form of local government reform. This chapter examines both the theoretical literature and associated empirical work on council consolidation. After briefly discussing the magnitude of amalgamation across the world, this chapter considers...
5. One Size Does Not Fit All: The Special Case of Remote Small Local Councils in Outback Queensland “Despite the recent limited forced consolidation experienced by some RAPAD councils, we find that the ‘tyranny of distance’ afflicting RAPAD members means that it is not amenable to ‘top-down’ reform measures, like council amalgamation, and policy makers should instead focus...
6. The Australian Experience of Municipal Amalgamation: Asking the Citizenry and Exploring the Implications “Debate over municipal amalgamations in Australian continues to dominate local government reform agendas, with the putative need to achieve economies of scale and scope consistently set against anti-amalgamation arguments designed to preserve extant communities. Following from an examination of recent...
7. Misconceiving Regional/Local Tensions: Two case studies from Tasmania “While tensions between the imperatives of regional, state and national development and local autonomy are common, there is no necessary trade-off between the two since regional development can co-exist with a vibrant system of local government. However, this is often...
8. Local Government in Tasmania: Reform and Restructuring “…success of amalgamation and reform in local government has been strongly influenced by the degree of local government involvement and support in the reform process, lessons that have wider application.” Tasmania has a long history of failed attempts at restructuring...
9. Leadership in local government reform : strategic direction versus administrative compliance “This paper reports on a study into the managerial and organizational responses to the reform of Victorian local government, highlighting the fact that each local authority is unique and that broad policy instruments designed to reform and improve local government...
10. From Convergence to Divergence: Reforming Australian Local Government “The article maps local government reform in the six Australian states over the last decade. It identifies an earlier phase of reform that focused primarily on redefining the roles and relationships within local government, especially between state and local governments,...