Professor Roberta Ryan

The Abbott Government announced its White Paper review of the Australian Federation on June 28, 2014. Set against this backdrop, discussions of the future of Australian local government may provoke an assumption that its role will be cruelled. However, reflection suggests that such an assumption is misplaced. In particular, when the complexities of regionalism in Australia are considered, the potential role of local government begs revisiting. We argue that local government ought to adopt a forthright position in the current debate, particularly with respect to financial reform.

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 episodes of consolidation in Australia, this paper reports on citizens' attitudes to amalgamation garnered from a national survey of 2,006 individuals. We found that generally, citizens are ambivalent toward amalgamation, although attitudes were influenced by particular demographic characteristics and attitudes to representation, belonging, service delivery requirements and the costs thereof. The results suggest that, away from the local government sector itself, structural reform may not be the vexatious issue it is often portrayed as. The implications of this are explored here.

In December 2015 the Australia and New Zealand Regional Science Association International (ANZRAI) held its 39th Annual Conference at the University of Technology Sydney. Prior to the conference the Editorial Board of Australasian Journal of Regional Studies (AJRS) and the Executive of ANZRAI agreed to a Special Edition (SE) of the journal entitled 'Local Governance and Regional Development' to be developed and published as part of the outcomes of the conference. In this 'Introduction' the members of the ad hoc Editorial Board formed for the SE provide an account of the conference and a concise overview of the papers therein as they relate to the theme of 'Local Governance and Regional Development'. We also reflect upon the strategic directions for research in regional studies.

Regional Australia is confronted by specific demographic, social, economic and infrastructure challenges, which we are denoting as 'slow-burn' threats. This article interrogates a recent national survey concerned with the value of local government to Australian communities, focusing upon differences in responses for regional and remote areas compared to those from urban capital cities. Findings indicate that regional and remote residents place more importance on local government delivering services that specifically focus on the long-term development and sustainability of the community than their urban counterparts, particularly economic and community development roles. We argue that this constitutes a demonstration of the different expectations that regional and remote communities have of local government in the face of 'slow burn' in regional and remote areas. Further, we suggest that the relationship between local governments in regional Australia and the communities they serve is usefully conceived in terms of what we denote as 'the close economy' and 'the local state'.

This paper analyses how effectively local government in Australia performs its functions as a key element of subnational governance. Service delivery and local democracy are identified as the core functions of local government. The analysis takes into account paradigms of public administration, democracy and management, the public organization, accountability and capacity. The concept of 'capacity' brings together many of the issues discussed in this paper. Questions of capacity relate to whether local governments are effectively performing their institutional functions, how they do so with regard to principles of good governance, and whether the dimensions of their capacity can be reformed if there was the need to meet additional demands.

Rural communities in Australia are confronting a period of unprecedented change. They face declining commodity prices, the withdrawal of both public and private sector sen'ices, such as banks and hospitals, and the closure of small businesses. Their populations are in decline, with young people leaving for the larger regional centres. Many also face a declining resource base as soils become saline and water resources are sold to areas with higher unit returns. This paper presents a framework for sustainable community development based on emerging ideas of performance auditing and the development of progress indicators. The triple bottom line community audit approach is recast for the community level, measuring performance on improved community wellbeing, reduced environmental impact and increased economic vitality. Rural communities need to redefine their future. A sustainability focus offers a way fonvard. © 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd.

We utilise the problem of dirty hands to consider the ethical dimensions of commissions of inquiry, particularly commissions of inquiry conducted for the purposes of public policy. The Independent Local Government Review Panel (ILGRP) in NSW is used as an example for the purposes of discussion. Four questions endemic to considerations of dirty hands are derived from Coady (2014). The framework affords various insights into the ethical terrain of this particular inquiry and those undertaken for the purposes of public policy more generally. We argue that commissions of this type and the ILGRP in particular cannot be labelled examples of dirty hands and that the concept of determinatio from the work of St Thomas Aquinas sheds light as to the nature of moral claims around commissions. We also argue that a fruitful analysis is afforded by Wallis' (2013) analytic framework of the 'logic of fateful choices faced by the leaders of commissions of inquiry'. Nevertheless, confusion surrounding the nature and types of inquiries is partially responsible for accusations of their ethical incoherence.