Community consultation in public policy: The case of the Murray-Darling Basin of Australia

Abstract

Community consultation is widely employed in contemporary Australia as a means of improving the formulation and implementation of public policy. However, little is known about the optimal expenditure of effort required for any given consultation. This article develops a rational choice model of community consultation that seeks to encapsulate the major elements involved in optimising consultation effort. The framework is particularly useful for understanding and explaining why actual community consultation processes may be sub-optimal. The rational choice model is then applied to the Living Murray debate over water resources in the Murray-Darling Basin of Australia.

Notes

¹ For an excellent review of the categorisation of alternative public consultation techniques, see Catt and Murphy (2003).

² $500m would buy about 500 gigalitres of water at current market rates, irrespective of what the community's preferences might be or the information that might be revealed from a community consultation process. Somewhat ironically, the consultation process has, in part, subsequently moved political rhetoric to a view that water should, in the first instance, be obtained via mechanisms other than the market.

³ The potential for covariance between the benefits of consultation is addressed later in this paper.

⁴ The law of diminishing marginal productivity is a generalisation that presumes resources are sufficiently heterogeneous so as to add differing values to any productive process. Thus, the most amenable resources are assumed to be used initially but as these dwindle in supply less amendable resources are required to be employed in order to expand output. The veracity of this phenomenon has been the subject of numerous strands of empirical enquiry that remain divided in their support.

⁵ The closing of the Murray mouth due to a lack of flow was frequently raised in the debate as an indicator of the inadequacy of river flows caused by excessive extractions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lin Crase

Lin Crase is Senior Lecturer in the School of Business at the Albury/Wodonga campus of La Trobe University. His research interests lie predominantly in the area of natural resource management, especially in the economics of Australian water markets.

Brian Dollery

Brian Dollery is Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for Local Government at the University of New England. His research focuses on the economics of government, particularly Australian local government.

Joe Wallis

Joe Wallis is Associate Professor in the School of Economics and Public Administration at the American University of Sharjah. His research program falls in the broad area of public-sector reform, and especially leadership and governmental reform.