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Reviving the Local Australian Community: Using local governments to improve trust in democracy and empower Australian communities

  • Writer: Global Voices Fellow
    Global Voices Fellow
  • Mar 8
  • 13 min read

Updated: Mar 21

Alexander Titus, Global Voices Policy Fellow, Y20 2023 Scholar


Executive Summary


Over the past two decades, Australians’ trust in democracy has been in freefall. Between 2007 and 2018, the number of Australians who say they trust Australian democracy decreased from 85.60% to 40.56%, representing a more than 40% decline (Karp and Evans, 2018). The loss of trust has deeply affected local Australian communities. Although trust in local councils has always remained higher than in the federal government, a loss of trust in the democratic system affects local council’s capacity to function because people can disengage. Local governments have thus languished and failed to foster engagement (Biddle and Gray, 2023). Although trust in government recovered marginally after the last election, now resting at around 43%, it is still less than 50% and is again on a downward trend (Biddle and Gray, 2023). The current state of government has fuelled in equal parts apathy and the rise of fringe groups such as the Australian anti-vax, QAnon and the Sovereign Citizens movements, which have capitalised on the growing distance between Australian governments and their constituents (Chou, Busbridge and Moffit, 2023). These groups have worked to decrease trust in government and take over weak local governments to spread their conspiracies (Norman, 2023). Therefore, restoring trust in democracy is essential to rebuilding not only the relationship between government and its people but also the state of grassroots communities (Bergin, 2017). While a wide range of reforms will be required to achieve this ambition, one way that Australia can make a positive change is to create ‘inclusive and accountable local governments.’


For this policy proposal, ‘accountable’ local governments are those that have a strong and responsive relationship with their electorate. This policy suggests that this would be achieved by improving electoral laws to encourage voter engagement and reduce voter fatigue. On the other hand, ‘inclusive’ local governments are those that not only include a wider range of people but are designed to ensure better local-level governance. This would ensure that people are incentivised to participate in local council politics and that this process is equitable and inclusive to breathe life back into local communities.


Problem Identification

Australian democracy is inaccessible to both the broad majority and vulnerable minorities; outside of voting, the average Australian has little active engagement in political organising and community building (Nicholas, 2023). Some key causes of this problem are that Australian local governments have failed to take a more robust role in our democracy and that our electoral system has failed to keep up with the diversity of Australian communities (ref). The result of these weaknesses is that our democratic systems have led people to feeling excluded and ultimately disfranchised (ref).


At present, the number of people a federal Member of Parliament in the Lower House represents varies per state. For example, in Tasmania an MP represents 80,000 people, while in South Australia they represent 127,000 people (Massola and Wright, 2023). These numbers often exclude smaller communities that exist in specific geographic regions, such as ethnic, religious or political minorities, from being able to wholly elect representatives in parliament. This is also apparent at the state and territory level, where seats can represent between 20,000 to 50,000 constituents. The electoral system, therefore, favours a hypothetical ‘average’ Australian by flattening the potential diversity that can be seen at a local level. In many instances representing the average can be a positive as it acts as a guard against radicalism. But with a growing cultural and political diversity, it is limiting Australians from being genuinely enfranchised. This ‘flattening’ leads to frustration at the margins, entrenching a two-party system that ultimately stifles democratic reform and leads to a sense of distance and apathy – all factors that lead to a deterioration of trust (Tormey, 2016). Consequently, Australian democracy has struggled to garner support and represent the diversity of its communities, especially those who find themselves removed from the traditional apparatuses of the state (ref).


The consequence is that our democracy does not represent vulnerable groups or even the broad majority. Instead, it favours those with a strong understanding of state power and politics rather than community-based leadership.

Context

Councils as providers of services to land


Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, who created complex and effective governments that represented their nations and clans for 65,000 years (Smith, 2006). Although this paper does not focus on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander government, its solutions are inspired by their forms of social construction.


The European colonial local governments began 1838 with the Perth Town Trust (Errington, 2017). However, due to mismanagement and funding, it was not until the 1860s that they stabilised (Johns, 1949). However, even though council representatives attended the conventions leading up to Federation, in 1901 they were completely sidelined, and the constitution made no reference to them except in the annotated version (Phillimore, Fenna and Pandey, 2022). From this point on, local councils were strictly confined to ‘services to land’ and lacked the funding required to expand their programmes (Brunet-Jailly and Martin, 2010).


Councils as potential centres of community


Since Whitlam’s era, local councils have emerged as front runners on several issues, most notably immigration settlement. They have also begun forming Regional Organisations of Councils (ROCs) to collectively bargain for more funding and greater awareness (Marshall, Dollery and Witherby, 2003). However, these developments have been inhibited by unequal electoral processes across the country. In the ACT, local councils do not exist, and council elections are optional in South Australia and Western Australia, meaning that most people do not vote (Australian Local Government Association, 2023). Moreover, since permanent residents are unable to participate, local councils in migrant areas are governed exclusively by people who often fail to take migrants into consideration (Boese and Phillips, 2017). Consequently, many local councils continue to have low turnouts in elections and are failing to mobilise and represent their communities.


This problem has been exacerbated by poor representation of intersectional groups in all aspects of government, meaning communities that have been institutionalised are heavily overrepresented. White-collar workers with backgrounds in business, law and politics made up at least 52% of elected officials in the Federal Parliament (Lumb, 2013). Only 2% came from medical backgrounds, and 4% came from primary production. Moreover, these groups were not ethnically diverse. Even though 23% of Australians claim a non-European ancestry, just 6.6% – or 15 out of the 227 members of parliament and senators come from a non-European background (Remeikis, 2022). Of particular concern, only 4.4% of Members of Parliament are of South or East Asian descent, despite South or East Asian Australians making up 18% of the wider population (Richards, 2023). Even more alarmingly, youth are almost completely absent from parliament, with the youngest member of the house of representatives as of 2023 being Philip Thompson at 31 and the average age of parliament being 51.


The present-day council is more functional than ever before, but falls woefully short of its potential. There is, therefore, great potential in moving towards a new ethos of understanding local councils as being ‘centres of communities’ rather than as providers of ‘services to people’ or ‘services to land’.


Therefore, Australia needs to embrace change to revive our democratic procedures so they can include a new generation of Australians. Local governments have the capacity to play a key role in community building and developing grassroots governance capacity. They have the potential to become a nexus between federal and state governments and people, and provide a source of political involvement that directly relates to people’s material conditions. They also have the potential to become a powerful way to enable young people and members of traditionally unrepresented groups to get involved in politics and develop skills for higher offices in federal and state government.


Compulsory voting is a salient feature of Australian democracy at the federal level and is likely to increase voter participation. Many states have already made local council elections compulsory, although this should be expanded to all local councils across Australia (Goss, 2017). Compulsory voting relies on the assertion that voting is a civic duty as well as a democratic right. This assertion, although somewhat arbitrary, has widespread support in Australia and has set Australian democracy apart from other OECD nations with its high participation in federal and state elections (Hill, 2004). For this policy, fines could be imposed on those who fail to vote in local government elections, or it could simply be accompanied by a notice.


In Australia, where elections are compulsory, voting rates have remained steady at 90%, whereas in elections where it is non-compulsory, participation rates have been around 30% (Western Australian Election Commission, 2022).

Policy Recommendation

The following recommendations are proposed to create an improved ‘model local council rules’ with the aim of providing the legislative settings to enable local councils to better represent and build their communities. They are as follows:


  1. To make local governments accountable by

    1. making local government elections compulsory,

    2. holding local government elections at the same time, and preferably on the same form as state elections, and

  2. To make local governments inclusive by

    1. lowering the voting age of local government elections to 16 (potentially to the age of criminal responsibility) and,

    2. ideally, ensuring that local government elections allow non-citizens, such as permanent residents, to vote.


Policy Recommendation One: Make local government elections compulsory and harmonise them with state elections


Reform the electoral laws of local councils to ensure widespread and easy participation. This strategy must have three prongs to be successful.


  1. The price of not participating should be high

  2. The cost of voting should be low

  3. The benefit of participating should be high.


This recommendation proposal will address the first two points by shifting local council participation from being a democratic privilege to being a civic duty with penalties for non-compliance. It would also ensure that voting is made easy by reducing the number of election cycles in Australia. These changes should increase the profile of local council elections, improving the mandate of local council officials and ultimately increasing the importance of voting in these elections.


In general, higher voter participation would likely lead to greater stability and a higher perceived legitimacy of local councils as being people’s representatives.

The primary weakness is that mandatory voting may lead to a greater number of ‘donkey votes’ (where the ballot is intentionally cast as invalid), which could have a detrimental effect on the quality of leaders in local councils (Evans, 2006). That being said, this could be mitigated through civil society initiatives such as education programmes. While making voting mandatory can lead to a greater number of donkey voting, it also reinforces the idea that voting is a civic responsibility rather than an optional privilege and, therefore, is valuable for creating engagement with local governments.


Voter fatigue is where participation in elections decreases the more elections are held because people are overburdened with election cycles and disengage (Garmann, 2017). This phenomenon can be reduced by decreasing the number of elections or by reducing the perceived ‘cost’ of voting (Goodman and Stokes, 2020). In this case, this could be offset by harmonising local council elections with state elections.


State and local council elections would be harmonised by either holding the elections at the same time or having local council members on the same ballot paper. The primary concern with this is that it would conflate local council concerns with state concerns and would likely lead to an increase in party-based politics at a local level (Rudolph and Leininger, 2021). While this is a concern, it would also lead to greater interest in local council elections and would force them to take a larger role in Australia. An increase in party politics would not necessarily lead to a decrease in more grassroots representation because local council candidates would still need to be responsive to their electorate, but it still may be a concern depending on the desired outcome.


Policy Recommendation Two: Expand the right to vote for young people and non-citizen residents


Australian communities would benefit from legislation that ensures that local councils are inclusive and are able to represent their constituents and communities. To make local councils inclusive, the people who live there must have the right to vote in local council elections. Local councils have a greater capacity to represent people from traditionally disenfranchised communities because they are smaller and, therefore, can cater to regional interests. Moreover, since they have limited power over matters of ‘national importance’, they are less politicised and can be used more expansively to institutionalise that would be otherwise excluded at a national or state level.


This policy proposes to make local councils inclusive by:


  1. Lowering the voting age of local government elections to 16 (potentially to the age of criminal responsibility) and,

  2. Ensuring that local government elections allow non-citizens, such as permanent residents, to vote.


The voting age in local council elections should be reduced to 16 years old. Including youth would enable young people to engage with democracy and provide a means for representation which is critically lacking in Australia (Chowdhury, 2023). The primary issue with including those between 16 and 18 is that young people may not be able to vote in their best interests. While there is some theoretical validity to this argument, studies suggest that there is no actual difference in the quality of choice selection above the age of 16 (Wagner, Johann and Kritzinger, 2012). Therefore, there isn’t a strong enough argument to remove a section of the population from voting due for lack of intellectual capacity. Instead, one could compromise by making voting between the voting age between 16 and 18 optional – introducing compulsory voting for those above the age of 18. This would enable young people to start engaging in democracy earlier and develop competencies before they engage in state and federal elections. This would contribute towards a stronger democratic culture and give young people the opportunity to develop the skills required to run for election in state and federal elections


Local councils should also be expanded to include non-citizen residents as is done in Victoria, South Australian and Tasmania. Including non-citizen residents would enable new migrants to engage with Australian Democracy earlier and build a stronger sense of community. It would also provide for organised representation and ensure that local councils are incentivised to act on the concerns of new migrants (Tham, 2022). The primary issue with this suggestion is that it might become securitised as some would argue that non-citizen residents carry a risk of enabling foreign interference. However, this is a small risk that can be mitigated through our pre-existing domestic policy and has not been an issue where non-citizen residents can vote. Moreover, since local councils see to matters of grassroots and communal importance, even if there was some foreign influence, the risk is marginal and the consequences of any interference would be low.


Implementation


The Australian constitution sets out legislative competencies for Australian state and federal parliaments. Since the jurisdiction of local councils is not mentioned in the constitution under section 51, it falls under the state and territories’ plenary powers. Therefore, each state and territory would have to implement these laws to amend the relevant acts in each jurisdiction. Alternatively, there would need to be another referendum to empower the Federal government to make laws with respect to local councils (NSW Parliamentary Research Service, 2013). However, this would be incredibly expensive and unnecessary.

Conclusion

At present, the legislation that underpins local councils is unequal and inadequate to support communities and their aspirations. This has limited the capacity of local councils to become centres of community that help represent people and their local communities. Successfully reforming our local councils would enable them to be used to significantly

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