Structure and Processes of Government in Australia
The first journal is about Autonomy versus Oversight in Local Government Reform: The Implications of ‘Home Rule’ for Australian Local Government, which was written by Bligh Grant and Brian Dollery from University of New England and published by Routledge on 11th September year 2012 as part Australian journal of political science. This article exposes various ideas that are broken down into sections; the first concept is based on the power of localities to function free from the oversight of higher tiers of the Australian state. Besides, Australian local government autonomy and oversight are vested on the need to understand the existence of local government’s dependency on the state government legislation. The latter can grant them the enabling powers which exhibit variability, allocation of responsibilities is part of granting autonomy courtesy of Australian government acts. Perhaps efforts to conceptualize local governments in Australia in terms of autonomy and oversight are sporadic because the latter requires a specified range and standards of council service provision and an adequate income of the given councils. Well, Dollery proposes various models, that is, control, preventive, rescue, and autonomy models, all aimed at the conceptualization of Australian local governments in terms of oversight and autonomy.
Furthermore, the principle of home rule can be applicable and valid in local governments in Australia since it helps to promote democracy and this means that local government will have the power to make decisions on behalf of local people, and thus local democracy will require local autonomy as much as the former advances prospects of local democracy. Well, as per the Australian act of 1989, there exists the need for the reassertion of the power of general competence under the elements of state-local relations characterized by the autonomy model. Nevertheless, local governments in Australia may also struggle due to the unfunded mandate, yet they bear specific responsibilities and objectives to accomplish. However, cost-shifting might be an appropriate strategy even though home rule also has a particular impact in an Australian jurisdiction since it can push for federal funding, meaning that it can be a principle by which state-local relations in Australia can be still organized.
The second journal is about Public Value: Positive Ethics for Australian Local Government published by Bling Grant and Josie Fisher on August 23rd the year 2011. The concept of public value is addressed by Moore, Wanna, and Rhodes in relation to the ethics of Australian local governments. Perhaps Moore exposes the theoretical account of public value by not considering party politics, which play a role in decision-making procedures and government formation at booth state and federal levels in Australia with the inclusion of cabinets that have specific authority in parliaments. The context of the local government of Australia doesn’t rely on Moore’s theory of public value based on the role of managers as public servants in correlation to managers in private sectors. Perhaps the public value is related to a political system whereby representatives of democracy have the responsibility of dealing with methodological biases through the authorization of various public actions that can lead to people’s satisfaction. Moore argued that politics remains the final arbiter of public value, with managers being central to political processes that depict the public value of local governments. Moreover, although the public value can assist in maintaining and increasing the legitimacy of local governments, it is less considered in the context of Australian local governments.
According to Rhodes and Wanna, there exist limitations to the theory of public value when it comes to the concept of west minster systems of governments such as Australian governments, which misdiagnosis the function of management in the public sector. The concept of public value as per Rhodes and Wanna is less applicable in the context of Australian local government due to some reasons. First, local governments are best overseen by tiers of government and conceptualize as political entities rather than local polities that oversee local administration. Secondly, Moore gave a lot of power to the so-called public managers compared to their role in west minster forms of government, and he failed to expose the idea of illegitimacy bureaucratic power since the public managers only operate within an authorizing environment. Perhaps, appointed official works at the pleasure of elected officials in Australian local governments with a predominant council-manager form of local government, which is designed to promote cooperation between elected and non-elected executives. Well, Australian local governments predispose to move from the kind of “dichotomy” approach to public administration characterizing west minster system towards operations that resemble those in council-manager forms in the USA. Besides, the Australian local governments uphold various models of political administration relations to cater to the local governance, that is, the separate roles model, responsive administration model, overlapping roles model, and autonomous administration model. The above models stand in stark contrast to the roles that elected officials can play in their careers as public servants in Australia, therefore, objecting to the sense of public value theory in the context of Australia local governments.