Local Government in Asia and the Pacific: A Comparative Study

Country paper: Australia

  Description of the Country
  Evolution of Local Government
  Local Government Categories
  Local Government Functions
  Local Government Finances
  Personnel Systems
  Central-Local Links
  Public Participation
  The Way Ahead
  References
  Further Reading

Brief Description of the Country and its National/State Government Structure

Demography

Following earlier visits to Australia by European explorers in the seventeenth century, permanent European settlement of Australia commenced in 1788 with the establishment of a penal colony in Sydney. To relieve its overcrowded prisons the British Government dispatched 736 convicts to serve their sentences in this great south-land they had recently discovered. The continent was not empty, as indigenous Aboriginals had occupied the land for at least 40,000 years. Estimates of the Aboriginal population when this First Fleet of European settlers set foot on Australian soil range from 300,000 to 1,400,000 divided into hundreds of tribes spread around the coast and across the vast Centre. In a little over 200 years the population has grown to a multi-cultural society of more than 18 million people, still living mainly around the coast and in large cities. The Indigenous Australian population - Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders - at the 1996 census was 352,970; Queensland having the highest numbers, closely followed by New South Wales. Torres Strait is the small sea passage between the northern tip of Queensland and Papua New Guinea.

Figure 1. Political Boundaries and Capital Cities

Australians are highly urbanized with 88 per cent living in cities and towns and more than half living in the eight capital city metropolitan areas. Size of the major cities and distribution of the population along the East Coast is illustrated below.

Table 1. Urbanization and Major City Populations

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics

Figure 2. Population Distribution (1993)

Table 2. Gross National Product and Gross Domestic Product Per Capita (in AUS $)

Source: Australian National Accounts

A feature of Australia's demography is its multicultural population. While English is the official and dominant language there are 122 European and Asian languages plus 114 Indigenous Australian languages spoken. Table 3 illustrates the impact of the aggressive immigration programme following World War II. In 1947 one in ten Australians had been born overseas, predominantly in Western and Southern Europe. By 1995 closer to one in four had been born overseas and while most still come from western and southern Europe, the increase in immigration from the Asian Pacific region can be seen. Larger cities such as Sydney and Melbourne have a larger percentage of overseas-born people than smaller towns or rural areas. Many immigrants prefer to settle in the large cities because of the location of family and friends and employment or business opportunities.

Table 3. Main Countries of Birth of the Population

Source: Australia in Profile: Estimated Resident Population by Country of Birth, Age and Sex

National governmental and political structure

In 1901 Australia became a nation when the six states - separate colonies of the then British Empire - joined as a Federation and formulated a Constitution. Australia remains a Federation of States, each of which retains its own constitution, government and laws. These six states, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania, together with two territories, Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory, cover the entire continent. The national Parliament sits in Canberra. Australia currently has 1 national government, 8 state/territory governments and 769 local governments.

Figure 3. Levels of Governments

Notes:
¹ Includes 31 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander local government bodies.
² Includes 5 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander local government bodies.
³ Includes 61 community government councils, incorporated associations and special purpose towns.
⁴ The ACT Government undertakes many government functions.

At the Commonwealth level, the government consists of a Prime Minister, Ministers (some in Cabinet, some not), Parliament - made up of two houses, the House of Representatives and the Senate - departments and numerous statutory authorities, boards, commissions, etc. The judicial system includes the High Court, Federal Court, Family Law Court and other judicial bodies. State governments are similar. They have a premier, Ministers and Parliaments consisting of two houses, except for Queensland, Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory, which have single-house (unicameral) Parliaments. In the other states the houses of Parliament go by such names as House of Assembly and Legislative Council. The Legislative Council, like the Senate in Canberra, is termed the Upper House, a House of Review and the House of Assembly, like the House of Representatives at Canberra, is referred to as the Lower House (Corbett 1992:5-6).

Australians elect 224 national politicians, 596 state/territory politicians and more than 7000 local politicians. Politicians in the lower houses at the national and state/territory levels represent geographic electorates, while those in upper houses represent a whole-of-state constituency. Voting is compulsory in all Commonwealth and State elections. In local government, apart from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander councils or community councils where the majority of councilors are Indigenous Australians, there are only 23 elected to other local authorities with one of them being elected as Mayor.

Table 4. Elected Representation in Commonwealth, State and Local Governments

Political parties

Since Federation Australia has had multi-party systems of government. Although there are great many Australian political parties, only four have any real prospect of regularly gaining parliamentary places. Of these the Australian Democrats and National Party each command a relatively small following, although the latter (formed in 1920 as the Country Party) has been relatively successful in participating in government through coalition with the Liberals. Thus far the Democrats, founded in 1977, have been successful in winning seats in the Senate. The dominance of the Australian Labour Party (founded by trade unionists during the 1890s) and Liberals (established in 1944 to give a voice to middle-class Australia) is rooted in an entrenched pattern of party identification, which, although showing recent signs of waning, still means that nine in every ten voters regard themselves as either coalition (Liberal/National) or Labour supporters (Ward 1995:22). This pattern of party representation is entrenched at the national and state/territory levels. While political parties do operate in local government, independent politicians play a much stronger role. In many large councils, such as Brisbane City, political parties field candidates with, normally, one party or the other in power. In some cases councils are made up of stridently independent local politicians. Single-issue politicians are likely to be more successful at the local level. Local demography also influences outcomes. As would be expected, neither small rural communities nor upper-middle class metropolitan suburbs are likely to be strongholds of the Australian Labour Party.

Evolution of Local Government, its Legal and Political Background

General systems of local government in the six states were put in place around the middle of nineteenth century. There had been local authorities and special incorporations in the capital cities before that. Local Government in the Northern Territory came into force in 1937 whereas Australian Capital Territory only achieved self-government in 1988.

Table 5. Local Government Origins

Source: Solomon, 1993:15

Pre-colonial local governance

While the British system of local government has a relatively short history in Australia, the country has had areas of local governance for thousands of years. Through religion and rules of custodianship (matrilineal descent in what is now New South Wales), Indigenous Australians have always exercised local governance. In a landmark decision in June 1992 the High Court of Australia brought down a judgement other than one based on a British precedent which abrogated the contention of Terra Nullius - land without people - when the British arrived. Known as the Mabo Judgement, the Court ruled that the land title of the Australian Indigenous Peoples is recognized in common law. This Indigenous Australians' land title, or Native Title, stems from the continuation within common law of their rights over land which pre-date European colonization of Australia. It was based on William the Conqueror's precedent and the Spain versus Western Sahara ruling of the International Court. This means that in the absence of an effective extinguishment by the Crown, this title represents through inheritance the original occupants' right to possession of their traditional lands in accordance with their customs and lores. The judgement rejected the Terra Nullius (empty land) legal fiction, bringing Australia almost in line with remaining common law countries - the USA, Canada and New Zealand.

Such recognition was not entirely new, Aboriginal ownership of land had always been recognized by Britain. This is clear from the very earliest dispatches to Australia from the British Colonial Office, proclamations in the House of Commons and private correspondence between officials. The clearest expression of this comes from the 1837 House of Commons Select Committee Report on Australian Colonies stating that the native inhabitants of any land have an incontrovertible right to their own soil. This seems, however not to have been understood (Reynolds 1992) or ignored.

In the 1992 Mabo judgement, two of the judges, Justices Deane and Gaudron, argued that: "Under the laws and customs of the relevant locality, particular [Aboriginal] tribes or clans were, either on their own or with others, custodians of the areas of land from which they derived sustenance and from which they often took their tribal names. Their laws and customs were elaborate and obligatory. The boundaries of their traditional lands were likely to be long-standing and defined. The special relationship between a particular tribe or clan and its land was recognized by other tribes and groups within the relevant local native system and was reflected in differences in dialect over relative short distances. In different ways and to varying degrees of intensity, they used their homelands for all the purposes of their lives: social, ritual and economic. They identified them in a way, which transcended common law notions of property and possession. As was the case in other British colonies, the claim to the land was ordinarily that of the tribe or other group, not that of an individual in his or her own right" (Reynolds 1996:11).

Constitutional position of local government

Local government in Australia has no recognition in the national constitution. Like the state governments themselves, local governments are creatures of the respective State Parliaments. Section 51 of the NSW Constitution Act of 1902, for example, provides that: "There shall continue to be a system of local government for the State under which duly elected or duly appointed local government bodies are constituted with responsibilities for acting for the better government of those parts of the State that are from time to time subject to that system of local government. The manner in which local government bodies are constituted and the nature and extent of their powers, authorities, duties and functions shall be as determined by or in accordance with laws of the Legislature."

Local Government Acts have been legislated by each State Parliament and in each case amended significantly in the 1990s. Generally the move has been away from prescriptive legislation - what councils can and cannot do - to providing more enabling frameworks within which councils have some degree of discretion in initiating their own policy directions. In most states reform of complementary legislation has been undertaken - legislation to do with roads, environmental planning, environmental management, public sector ethics. This will be taken up in more detail when dealing with central-local links. The last two decades have been a period of significant local government reform in Australia. A snapshot of two decades of reform identified by two Australian researchers (Gerritson and Osborn) is shown below.

Table 6. Recent Local Government Reforms

Source: Gerritson & Osborn 1997:81

Local Government Categories and Hierarchies

For administrative purposes Australia has adopted a national classification system (ACLG) for local governments based on 22 categories divided between urban and rural areas and four population sizes. These categories are used for a range of statistical purposes, financial grants from higher levels of government and more recently in developing comparative benchmarks.

The nation wide distribution of Australia's 769 councils into the twenty-two ACLG categories is shown below.

The majority of Australian local governments are small in terms of population. More than three-quarters have less than 30,000 people. In such a highly urbanized society there are many huge councils by area with tiny populations. For example three NSW councils, Bourke, Cobar and Central Darling, cover the same area as the Indonesian Island of Java, but the respective populations are about 12,000 and 95,000,000. Local government, primarily in the sparsely populated Centre, does not even cover about one quarter of the country.

Figure 4. Size of Local Governments

Local Government Functions

The 1995-1996 Local Government National Report of the National Office of Local Government provides an overview of the roles and functions of local government: "Local government has a governance role, a service delivery role, a planning and community development role and a regulatory role". The scope of local government powers and functions varies from state to state. Councils conduct business and provide services according to local needs and the prescriptions of the various local government acts. The following are examples of local government functions and services:

• Engineering (public works design, construction and maintenance - e.g. roads, bridges, footpaths, drainage - cleaning, waste collection and management);
   
• Recreation (golf courses, swimming pools, sports courts, recreation centres, halls, kiosks, camping grounds and caravan parks);
   
• Health (water sampling, food sampling, immunization, toilets, noise control, meat inspection and animal control);
   
• Community services (child care, elderly care and accommodation, refuge facilities, meals on wheels, counseling and welfare);
   
• Building (inspection, licensing, certification and enforcement);
   
• Planning and development approval;
   
• Administration (aerodromes, quarries, cemeteries, parking stations and street parking);
   
• Cultural/educational (libraries, art galleries and museums);
   
• Utilities (in some states electricity, gas, water, sewerage, transport, etc.); and
   
• Other (abattoirs, sale-yards, markets and group purchasing schemes).

Compared with many countries, local government in Australia has a relatively narrow range of functions. For instance, it does not take general responsibility for the provision of services such as education and policing. This, in part, is due to historical factors, including the fact the local government traditionally derives the bulk of its revenue from rates on property. As a result, functions and services are heavily oriented to property, particularly outside the major metropolitan centres. Many functions with direct impact on people, which could be undertaken effectively by local government, are provided through parastatal agencies or Quasi Non-Governmental Organizations (QUANGO) established and controlled by state governments. Some parastatals are large infrastructure organizations such as Sydney's water and electricity authorities. Others, such as total catchment management trusts or Rural Lands Boards, are smaller and regional. A constant criticism is that not only do they bypass local government altogether, there is frequently no coordination between them. State government legislation has recently established regional waste management boards for metropolitan Sydney and surrounding regions. Although local government has representation on the boards they are responsible to NSW Government. Non-elected parastatal agencies, the so-called QUANGOs, are on the increase.

Obligatory functions and processes

While local governments do not have autonomous general-purpose powers, recent changes to legislation have provided greater discretion in what they may do, circumscribed always by the functions and powers of higher levels of government. A council may exercise discretion provided it is within the ambit of the respective local government legislation and does not move beyond the powers and functions of the state or Commonwealth governments. In each state/territory the applicable legislation does impose obligations on what councils must do, for example; regulatory controls over land and building, prosecutions against breaches of the legislation. Obligatory processes are as important as obligatory functions. In their operations councils are obliged to be open and accountable to their communities, to protect the environment and to have regard to the long term and cumulative effects of its decisions.

Legislation imposes requirements for declaration of pecuniary and other vested interests. The possibility of conflict between public duty and private interest has been the subject of much attention recently. Possibilities of conflicts of interest are considered to arise in tendering and purchasing, staff recruitment, secondary employment, gifts, benefits and hospitality, planning approvals, licensing, business interests of elected officials and election support. In fact, reform of processes of local government has dominated the reform agenda in recent years. Codes of conduct have been introduced for local government, similar to those for states, territories and the national government.

In New South Wales and Queensland concern to maintain ethical practice in the public sector has given rise to the creation of the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) and the Queensland Criminal Justice Commission (CJC). Both bodies have dual roles of investigating and prosecuting corrupt behaviour in the public sector and implementing prevention measures such as education programmes and codes of conduct. The jurisdictions of both bodies extend to both elected representatives and appointed staff. Members of council - elected or appointed - and members of the public may refer a matter to the corruption authority. If, after preliminary investigation, the matter warrants, a full investigation will be undertaken and prosecution may follow.

Local government elections

Communities elect their own local government councilors. The form of election, whether it is compulsory or voluntary and the length of term vary from state to state but are usually three or four years. Mayors of individual councils may be elected popularly or by the other councilors. A popularly elected Mayor normally serves for the full term of the council, while mayoral elections from within the councilors are annual. There are no limits to the number of terms for Mayors elected under either system. Except for a few very large councils, Mayors and especially councilors are working part times. Tribunals establish the remuneration a local authority can pay its Mayor and councilors. Their work is onerous and demands excessive, giving rise to complaints when they compare themselves to their full-time state and Commonwealth counterparts. With the advent of council/city manager models the role of Mayors has changed, leading to tensions between the political and administrative arms in the system. The Mayor is no longer the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of council's operations, that authority now resides with the general manager appointed by full council. This has been a difficult adjustment for some Mayors, particularly when they had been Mayor or CEO prior to recent legislative changes. For some local politicians it remains a fundamental issue of local representative democracy. In most cases however, astute general managers have learned to work harmoniously with the political arm of council.

Table 8. Local Government Elections

Go to Local Government Finances