Challenging times for local government in Labor’s new federation

Main Article Content

Graham Sansom

Abstract

"Vice-chancellors have a responsibility to get down and say that we're prepared to reform the sector in the following sensible and constructive ways … rather than going back in a traditional way and saying, 'Give us more money and leave us alone'. We will get nothing simply by asking for more money.”

The Australian Labor Party went to the 2007 election promising a new era of cooperative federalism that would end the ‘blame game’ between federal and state governments and re-energise reform and productivity agendas. On the evidence of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting on 26 March 2008, these agendas are advancing rapidly. The communiqué foreshadowed a raft of new commonwealth-state agreements, streamlined arrangements for special purpose grants and, perhaps most significantly, performance criteria for payment of at least some of those grants.2

Article Details

How to Cite
Sansom, G. (2008). Challenging times for local government in Labor’s new federation. Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance, (1), 146-150. https://doi.org/10.5130/cjlg.v1i0.763
Section
Policy and Practice
Author Biography

Graham Sansom, UTS Centre for Local Government

Graham Sansom is the Director of the UTS Centre for Local Government, and Editor of the Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance. Staff Profile: http://datasearch.uts.edu.au/site_manager_sites/clg/staff/sansom.html