Counting the Cost: A Critical Evaluation of the Australian National Broadband Network Roll-Out under the Rudd/Gillard Governments

A nascent literature has examined recent controversial policy initiatives by the Australian Government using insights from the literature on public policy evaluation. Scholars have considered inter alia the Mineral Resources Rent Tax, the Home Insulation Program, the Green Loans Program, the Building the Education Revolution and the macroeconomic stimulus package after the global financial crisis. The present paper adds to this literature by considering the National Broadband Network (NBN). The costs of implementing the NBN are examined and the paper attempts to draw some broader public policy ‘lessons‘ to inform future public policy making both in Australia and elsewhere.     

Chalk and Cheese: A Comparative Analysis of Local Government Reform Processes in New South Wales and Victoria

A substantial empirical literature exists on the consequences of local government reform programs. However, much less effort has been directed at examining how reform processes affect the outcomes of reform programs and little work has been invested in the comparative analysis of local government reform processes. To address this neglect in the literature, this article provides a comparative analysis of the contemporary municipal reform initiatives in the New South Wales and Victorian state local government systems. It is argued that the much more deliberative and inclusive Victorian approach represents a superior approach to the hurried “top-down” New South Wales method.     

Shared Services in Australian Local Government: Rationale, Alternative Models and Empirical Evidence

Widespread enthusiasm amongst Australian policy elites for structural reform in local government has evaporated as disappointing outcomes of council amalgamation programs became evident. As a consequence, emphasis has now shifted towards shared serviced models as a means of enhancing service provision and reducing costs. However, a disturbing feature of the current debate on shared services has been the absence of a well-articulated economic and political rationale for this form of service delivery, a lack of analysis of alternative models of shared service provision and a neglect of available empirical evidence. This article seeks to remedy these deficiencies by considering the analytical foundations of shared local services, conducting a review of alternative models as vehicles for shared services and evaluating available empirical evidence.     

Local government reform in South Africa: An analysis of financial management legislative compliance by municipalities

South African local government has undergone radical transformation. The reform process included a local government financial management best‐practice technical assistance programme (MFMTAP) targeting financial management and especially budget quality reform. Dollery and Graves (2009) earlier examined the efficacy of the South African National Treasury (NT's) municipal budget funding compliance technique for measuring adherence to the Municipal Finance Management Act's (MFMA) budget funding requirements using a single metropolitan municipality case study. This article further evaluates the robustness and validity of the funding compliance instrument as a reform performance measurement tool by comparing the results of four geographically and demographically different municipalities. Also introduced is a performance ‘trend’ instrument similar to a ‘Likert scale’ for comparing municipal performance. Optimal tax revenue theory is invoked to examine this key revenue variable for producing a compliant budget. The article finds the ‘budget funding’ reform component of the Best‐Practice Technical Assistance (BPTA) programme presently ineffective and unsustainable. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Enhancing Australian Regional Policy: A Conceptual Framework for Assessing the Role of Regional Development Australia

Australian regional development has suffered from ‘fragmentation’ with policy responsibility shared between different tiers of government. The Rudd government sought to improve regional policy with the establishment of the Regional Development Australia (RDA) network. However, uncertainty surrounds the role of RDA. This paper seeks to illuminate this problem by drawing on the literature on types of multi-tiered governance, especially the work of Hooghe and Marks and Skelcher on Type I and Type II bodies. It is argued in a normative framework that the RDA network has the characteristics of Type II entities and that this gives it a comparative advantage in specific respects.     

Institutional vehicles for place-shaping in remote Australia

Some communities in remote Australia represent the most impoverished people in the country, with the problem especially acute amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Effective remedial intervention is often undermined by the absence of democratically elected, local government institutions. Place-shaping as a developmental process enables local people to become agents of change, and thereby self-determine and shape their places for the future. This paper considers the different institutional structures which could underpin place-shaping in remote settlements. Drawing on a range of governance structures, an emphasis on less traditional entities and polity-forming bodies may better serve the interests of remote people.     

Tortoises and Hares: The Race to Shared Services Across Australian State and Territory Jurisdictions

All tiers of government in Australia have recently aimed at enhancing service provision, with shared service platforms a recent innovation. To date there has been no scholarly inquiry into comparative shared service performance at the Australian state level. This article evaluates the experience of different state jurisdictions in adopting shared service platforms within “Whole of Government” approaches to public sector reform. It demonstrates that those jurisdictions most eager to embrace shared services have created organizations susceptible to particular adverse outcomes and that, far from implementing shared services programs, they may have installed monopoly-provider conditions for a range of back-office functions.     

Place-Shaping by Local Government in Developing Countries: Lessons for the Developed World

The Lyons Inquiry into local government in Britain represented a significant contribution to the debate on local government reform, with policy ramifications well beyond contemporary Britain. This article considers the Inquiry's concept of “place-shaping” as a mode of local government reform which captures the experience of a number of developing countries in recent years. By way of illustrative examples, we examine these processes in the specific contexts of South Africa and Indonesia. In particular, we consider whether the devolution of functions to municipalities in developmental settings constitutes place-shaping, and how this bears on processes of local government reform in developed nations.     

Efficiency Measurement in Australian Local Government: The Case of New South Wales Municipal Water Services

Australian local government has experienced a series of reforms directed at increasing economic efficiency. An important element in the reform program has been the development of a number of partial indicators of local government service delivery in the states and territories. This paper attempts to augment this literature on performance measurement in Australian local government by using data envelopment analysis (DEA) with holistic indices of allocative and technical efficiency in New South Wales (NSW) municipal water services. It also seeks to incorporate qualitative indicators into efficiency measures. “Best-practice” councils are identified and the underlying causes of municipal water service efficiency are analyzed.     

Keeping It In‐House: Households Versus Population as Alternative Proxies for Local Government Output

Forced amalgamation has been used as a policy instrument in local government by numerous regulatory authorities across the world. A common presumption underlying municipal mergers holds that larger local councils will experience greater economies of scale. However, the empirical evidence on this question is mixed. Part of the reason for this could lie in the frequent use of population as a proxy for local government output in the empirical literature. This paper examines the use of alternative proxies, particularly the number of households but also the addition of business unit data. We demonstrate that household data represents a more accurate proxy of Australian local government output compared to population size. In addition, the paper employs experimental data, conceptual considerations on population, and household dynamics to establish that the number of households represents the most appropriate measure of local government size for both empirical and public policy purposes.