Martin Mowbray

Intellectuals and the Local State: The Australian Local Government Literature

Literature on the local state in Australia is reviewed and several characteristic features are identified. These include the absence of fundamental questions about the place of local government within the overall state; the lack of effort to explain change; and the prevalence of ideological conservatism. It is concluded that alternative futures for local government require a more critical and open literature.

Wealth, Welfare and the City: Developments in Australian Urban Policy

This paper reviews the renewal of interest in urban issues, noting the range of housing and urban infrastructure supply problems and particularly the point that policy responses are based on preferences for measures that are not dependent on public expenditure, nor on threatening the tax shelter of owner occupied housing or private control of the supply of land. Alternative initiatives based on commercial activity are located as being part of a trend to more privatised urban infrastructure, services and urban management. To illustrate this trend, one particular type of emerging policy response reliant on private activity, long term residency in relocatable dwelling estates, is examined in some detail. Particular attention is paid to the role of the state in facilitating this mode of housing and infrastructure provision, and to its social implications.

A case for the renovation of community work education

Abstract The article addresses the contemporary scope of Australian community work. A review of working documents and other publications, all written by non academics, indicates the purview of community work practice to be restrictive. This is evident in a lack of clear expectations for specialist qualifications amongst practitioners and also practices appear to centre on service provision rather than on the broader agenda for social change that various authorities claim for community work. From a range of program descriptions and prescriptions, community work in practice also appears to be narrowly focused and generally unconnected with cognate practices at the local level, such as town planning, local government management, local economic development, infrastructure finance, or even with contemporary debates about urban policy. Community work documents also reveal restrained political critique and low levels of analysis and reporting. The review suggests a rethinking of community work education is in or...

Political and Economic Dimensions of Local Social Planning in NSW

Concern with urban design and infrastructure has re-emerged in a time of public expenditure restraint. Local government in NSW is under increasing pressure to implement acentrally drafted, overseas-conceived and regressive scheme for financing urban infrastructure. To collect these ultimately user pay levies, local plans have to be developed. The potential of social planners to contribute to greater social equity may be enhanced by engagement of a range of challenges which go beyond provision of local amenities.

Manufactured Home Estates: Extending Housing Options Or Benchmarking Cities?

Manufactured houses are generally prefabricated off-site in major sections and transported for installation. The authors examine aspects of the development of manufactured housing estates, particularly in NSW. Their interest is in the ramifications of manufactured housing estates for standards of living, rights of citizenship, housing affordability, and for urban development in general. To understand the significance of MHEs, it is misleading to focus only on the estates per se. MHEs are not constituted in any homogenous or static form. Nor are they necessarily a distinct category from other urban developments. MHEs, it is suggested, need to be regarded both as part of overall urban development and for their possible impact on urban policy.

Local Government Recreation Planning and Equity

Recreational facilities embody a considerable amount of wealth and public as well as private expenditure. They are likely to increase in importance. As easily the largest government recreational facility provider, local governments are increasingly involved in recreational planning, largely undertaken by private consultants. This paper reviews some of this work, particularly from the point of view of social justice and equity. It raises questions about the quality of advice being generated for councils by recreation planners and researchers.

Unfixing the Game: Sport and Recreation Policy and Local Government

The Australian Women in Sport and Recreation Strategy 1992–1994 makes provision for government financial sanctions against funded sporting organizations which fail to act over equal opportunity. If put into effect, this measure represents some departure from mere exhortation and reliance on industry self regulation. However, sports organizations are vastly overshadowed by local councils as providers of sporting infrastructure. Serious engagement of the issue of inequity in sport and recreation must, therefore, entail effort to change policies of local government, the largest provider of public recreation amenities. The Commonwealth has the basic means in place for undertaking this task but, on form so far, not the will.

Local government and state control: Municipalising the Northern Territory land councils∗

If implemented, the recommendations of a recent review of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 would see relatively strong provisions for Aboriginal people to obtain and manage their traditional lands abolished. A centrally regulated and assimilationist system of local governance would be substituted. The neo‐colonial implications of the proposals are masked by liberal rhetoric of community and local democracy.

Restructuring Child Welfare: Deinstitutionalisation and Austerity in the N.S.W. Department of Youth and Community Services

This paper concerns the emerging trend towards privatisation, localisation and family based care in child welfare. While recent developments are officially held to stem from the needs of the child,...

Practice review: Community development the third way: Mark Latham's localist policies

For over 5 years ‘community’ has again been faddish and expedient in public policy and program design. Though it has proliferated in the names of state agencies and their programs since the 1970s, a new range of programmatic labels reflects a resurgence of government interest in the concept. These include community capacity building, government–community partnerships, community and neighbourhood renewal, place management, and so on. All state and territory governments have communitarian programs featuring these concepts. These are operated by departments with terms like community development or community services in their titles, as well as other public agencies. Communitarian concepts also abound in public policy discourse and politicians’ speeches. The Commonwealth government now has a national Stronger Families and Communities Strategy said to be all about “community involvement and giving communities the chance to think about their own local issues and what solutions they can put in place to deal with them” (www.facs.gov.au/ sfcs/about/strengthening.htm). The government’s leaders, such as Treasurer Peter Costello, have declared their wish to restore the community life of the past. They declare their commitment to building the necessary social capital to do so, particularly through the not-for-profit sector (Costello, 2003, p. 6). Launching the Victorian government’s Community Capacity Building Initiative in 2001 Premier Bracks proclaimed that “This is not the usual ‘top down’ approach to services—it’s about communities working out their own needs, and developing solutions to turn around their fortunes” (Phillips & Oxley, 2002, p. 8). Candy Broad, the Victorian Minister for Local Government and Minister for Housing, boasts that “Building stronger communities—generating positive social capital—is now a front and centre issue for modern governments.” She continues, “We now have numerous community building projects across Victoria, in what is the biggest effort by any Australian Government to elevate