Structural Reform in Australian Local Government: The Armidale Dumaresq-Guyra-Uralla-Walcha Strategic Alliance Model

Structural reform aimed at enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of Australian local government is once more under way; this time in the guise of a program of compulsory amalgamation in NSW, and with the prospect of substantial municipal reform looming in Western Australia. In common with earlier episodes of Australian local government reform, most notably the Victorian experience in the 1990s, municipal amalgamation is again the favoured instrument of state government policymakers. Indeed, Anne Vince is surely correct in describing council amalgamation as the dominant 'thread which runs through Australian local government history' (Vince 1997, p. 151).