​The Australian Centre of Excellence for Local Government, in association with the LGMA, MAV and Bendigo Bank, is completing a study on community governance which has examined how it is evolving both in Australia and internationally, supported by extensive case study material.  

This workshop will draw on the learnings of that study and explore the way in which expectations of local government are changing. We are now expected to be about much more than just "roads, rates and rubbish". Instead, there's a much greater emphasis on local government as advocates for its communities across a very wide range of social, economic and other outcomes. We've also just witnessed a major change in local government in England with a new localism Bill designed to shift responsibility for managing a wide range of services from central government to local government and beyond to local government's communities. With all that change going on it seems timely to look at what is actually happening here in Australia in the governance of our communities, and how that might evolve in the future.

This topic also recognises the growing distinction between the formal government role of local government, and the practice of governance which typically involves a wide range of networks linking government bodies of various kinds, civil society organisations and the private sector. A further distinction is that government as an activity is undertaken within a defined geographic boundary - the borders of the nation state, the boundaries of a state within a federal system, or the statutorily defined district of a local authority. Governance in contrast will often be concerned with areas defined by peoples' sense of 'identity'. This can be seen in much of the Australian experience where the focus for community governance may be around a single township within a rural Shire, a neighbourhood within an urban council, or the catchment of a community bank branch.