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Abstract
Ongoing local community dissatisfaction in some newly amalgamated local government areas resulting from the 2007 Queensland forced amalgamation program has raised the prospect of de-merger in that state. One catalyst has been the Opposition's commitment to de-amalgamation should it acquire government. Apart from some descriptive discussion of actual de-amalgamation episodes, almost no prescriptive analysis exists on the optimal form any de-merger process may take. Using two documented cases of de-amalgamation in metropolitan and regional settings, this exploratory paper seeks to address this gap in the literature on local government by presenting a ‘stylised’ approach to de-amalgamation designed for Australian local government conditions built around five generic principles.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to sincerely thank two anonymous referees for their most useful comments on an earlier draft of the paper.
Notes
Brian Dollery is Professor of Economics and Director of the UNE Centre for Local Government. Michael Kortt is Senior Lecturer in the Southern Cross Business School at Southern Cross University. Bligh Grant is Research Lecturer in Local Government Studies and Deputy Director of the UNE Centre for Local Government.