Spontaneous Structural Reform in Australian Local Government: the case of the Gilgandra Co-operative Model in New South Wales

Abstract

Dire financial constraints and the threats of forced structural reform have had the unforeseen effect of forcing municipal councils across Australia to reconsider their operational activities and organisational arrangements. With considerable ingenuity, numerous municipalities have proposed and sometimes adopted new structural formations that embody various forms of co-operative service provision. This remarkable development has unfortunately been largely ignored in the scholarly literature on Australian local government. In a modest effort aimed at remedying this neglect, the present paper seeks to outline the small, rural New South Wales Gilgandra Shire Council's (2004) ‘Co-operative/Local Government Service Company’ model, place it in the broader context of alternative models of local governance suitable for Australian conditions, and evaluate its characteristics.

Keywords:

• Gilgandra Shire Council
• local government
• structural reform

Acknowledgments

The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Gilgandra Shire Council. The authors would like to thank the Editor and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on an earlier draft of the paper. Brian Dollery gratefully acknowledges the financial support provided by the Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP 0558-400.