Interesting article on community governance by MDL, based on an overview prepared for the NSW Independent Local Government Review Panel, the Local Government Association of South Australia’s expert panel on the ‘Council of the Future’ and Local Government New Zealand. The assignment looked at how decision-making at a community level is handled in England, three Australian states and New Zealand. It found interesting differences; not just in the formal provisions but also in the way communities choose how they want to engage.
MDL concludes that as we reconsider local government structure, “…the lessons coming through from facilitating non-statutory community level governance strongly suggest that governance is something inherent in communities, rather than something that can be created by statutory intervention.”
