Doing the Right Thing: An Evaluation of New Models of Local Government Service Provision in Regional New South Wales

Intense financial pressure and threats of dissolution through amalgamation in local government structural reform programs have forced regional and rural councils across Australia to consider new organizational arrangements for service delivery. As a consequence, an ingenious array of institutional models has been developed and implemented over the recent past. However, the very spontaneity that has engendered this remarkable process has meant that it has occurred across non-metropolitan Australia often with councils or groups of councils arriving at similar solutions to common problems in ignorance of the efforts of other local authorities. This paper seeks to place selected new models of municipal service delivery in New South Wales in the analytical context of the taxonomy of alternative generic models and then assess their main characteristics as well as their ability to meet the needs of rural constituents.