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Over the past decade Australian local government has undergone drastic change. The sheer pace of reform has made it difficult for practitioners and scholars alike to document and evaluate these rapid changes and even most recent extant analyses are now dated. Given the urgent need to review trends in Australian local government, this paper examines the recent programs of legislative, structural, workplace and financial reform.

Australian fiscal federalism possesses a greater degree of vertical imbalance than comparable federations elsewhere due to a concentration of revenue-raising powers at the level of the Commonwealth government and a concentration of expenditure functions at the state and local government levels. Efforts to deal with this problem have focused on intergovernmental grants. While substantial literature exists on the financial nexus between the Commonwealth and state governments, little research effort has been expended on the local government grants process. The present paper seeks to remedy this by documenting the evolution and role of the local government grants process.

In an effort to boost participation in vocational education and training (VET), in 2009, the Australian Government launched its VET FEE-HELP income-contingent loan programme for VET students. The programme was terminated in 2016 following numerous failed attempts to arrest its escalating costs and improve its performance. In an effort to shed light on the failure of the VET FEE-HELP programme, in this paper, the authors offer estimates of the aggregate costs involved and the quantum of graduates.

In this paper, the authors examined the VET FEE-HELP programme through the analytical lens offered by Marsh and McConnell’s (2010) framework, which offered a broad, “big-picture” view covering three dimensions of policy success or failure.

By identifying the causes of the failure, the authors concluded that the features of the scheme designed to improve accessibility of VET also allowed for exploitative behaviour on the part of VET providers, causing deterioration in training quality and leading to a substantial amount of wasteful public expenditure.

The authors seek to illuminate the demise of the hitherto neglected programme to contribute towards the literature on Australian Government failure.

The paper addresses the question of whether Crown land managed by local authorities in the New South Wales (NSW) local government system should be recognised as assets on municipal balance sheets.

The paper provides a synoptic review of the literature on accounting for public goods assets followed by a critical analysis of the official requirements of the NSW government on the recognition of Crown land.

The NSW government holds that Crown land managed by local councils should be recognised as an asset on council books. However, following an assessment of the problem through the analytical prism of financial accounting, it is argued that councils do not possess control over Crown land and that such land should thus not be recognised by councils.

The paper covers the legal and accounting framework applicable to NSW local government. However, it has broader implications for other local government systems with similar institutional and legislative foundations, such as other Australian states, New Zealand and South Africa, and these implications are highlighted in the paper.

It is argued that NSW government policymakers should re-consider the requirement for Crown land to be recognised on councils' books. Local authorities would then be able to save money and time on external auditing, management of land asset registers and the mandatory valuation of land.

Although Crown land shares some of the characteristics of other public good assets, unique accounting challenges arise due to the existence of a market in which such land could be traded not by councils, but by its legal owner (the Crown). In financial accounting, legal ownership is not considered as the main criterion over assets. However, the authors argue that for Crown land vested with councils, it becomes a critical factor in decision making.

A public finance framework is used to examine the relationship between community composition, namely occupancy status, and the provision of governmental services. A comprehensive literature survey suggests that a systematic relationship exists between the fraction of renters in a given jurisdiction and the level of fiscal expenditures. More particularly, it would appear that renters ceteris paribus are willing to support a higher level of publicly provided goods than homeowners. The competing hypotheses of renter illusion and renter rationality are discussed, as are the differing implications for public policy. Suggestions are also made on how future research on this important topic might proceed.

This paper evaluates key developments in the social capital literature over the past decade. It then examines empirical work on the purported the link between social capital and economic performance. Although these results indicate that good governance and social cohesion make a measurable contribution to economic development, the offer little guidance for policy formulation. Early contributors to the social capital field were pessimistic about the ability of the state to stimulate social capital formation. More recently, there has been a groundswell of interest in the application of community development principles to foster social capital at the micro level. This paper incorporates a critical evaluation of the mainstream social capital literature from a social economics perspective. The various strands within the social economics tradition share a common concern with the “disembedding” of social context from mainstream economics.

An embryonic empirical literature on Australian policing has established that commitment levels of police officers are comparatively low. This paper seeks to add to this literature.

The paper applies Allen and Meyer's three‐component model of organizational commitment, in conjunction with the Eisenberger et al.'s model of perceived organizational support, to a sample of 351 sworn police officers and student officers.

The results seem to confirm earlier Australian findings since organizational commitment among the sample of respondents was also found to be low. It is suggested that additional skills training and tuition subsidies for officers could enhance organizational commitment.

The paper provides useful information on levels of commitment among Australian police officers and suggestions on how organizational commitment can be enhanced.

To invoke Julian Le Grand's conceptual model of the interaction between human motivation and policy formulation in order to explain how motivational endogeneity in the university environment has distorted policy outcomes in the Australian higher education reform program.

Le Grand contends that changes in the perception of policy makers of both motivation and agency in the public sector have transformed public sector reform programs in the past two decades. However, because producers and consumers of public services react vigorously to different policy presumptions of their behaviour, a problem of endogeneity arises that may distort the intended outcomes of reform processes. This conceptual framework is applied to higher education reform in Australia from the so‐called Dawkins reform program in the late 1980s onwards.

Argues that the Le Grand model can shed light on the changes in Australian higher education that have occurred as a consequence of the ongoing reform process and account for at least some of the unintended negative consequences of the reforms.

The paper represents the first application of the Le Grand model to higher education reform.

At present no satisfactory economic theory of non‐profit organizational leadership exists. The purpose of this paper is to develop an economic theory of non‐profit leadership and apply this theory to the problem of non‐profit failure or “voluntary sector failure.”

The paper draws on the economic literature on the non‐profit sector to critically examine this approach to theorizing about non‐profit organizations (NPOs). It then considers the contribution that Lester Salamon has made to the understanding of NPOs. It is argued that the very sources of non‐profit “distinctiveness” identified by Salamon are also simultaneously associated with “voluntary sector failure.” An economic theory of non‐profit leadership is developed and it is held that appropriate leadership can reduce voluntary failure.

The major comparative advantages of NPOs make these agencies particularly prone to various forms of “voluntary failure” that present challenges not only to NPOs, but also public policy makers. This paper presents a theory of non‐profit leadership that seeks to demonstrate that appropriate forms of non‐profit leadership can overcome, or at least ameliorate, voluntary failure.

Future research could determine empirically whether leadership plays a decisive role in the performance of the non‐profit sector. This would assist in assessing the empirical validity of the presented in this paper.

The literature on non‐profit failure is incomplete without an adequate theory of non‐profit leadership. This paper develops a theory of non‐profit organizational leadership and argues that appropriate leadership can reduce the extent and severity of non‐profit failure.

The purpose of this paper is to contrast the marketing strategies of the New England Australia wine‐producing region with those of the Languedoc‐Roussillon region in France. While the two regions occupy similar market positions, they nonetheless reveal diametrically opposed marketing strategies. Against the background of this comparative discussion, the paper proposes methods to enhance the development of the New England Australia wine region so that it becomes a more complete example of successful rural restructuring.

This paper uses a comparative, political economy approach to explore the marketing strategies of the New England Australia wine‐producing region, and the Languedoc‐Roussillon region in France. In particular, following the work of Garcea‐Parpet, the paper seeks to demonstrate that markets are most usefully viewed as social and political/legal constructs, as well as economic exchanges, and that focussing on the former elements is a fruitful way to proceed, both in terms of analysis and policy prescription for the industry.

Comparison with the Languedoc‐Roussillon region in France generates future potential opportunities for New England Australia. A number of issues are discussed with respect to the organisation of the industry and its representation, particularly focusing on leadership and the extent to which leadership was both a catalyst for change and a driver of continued success in the case of Languedoc‐Roussillon.

This paper represents the first exploration of the impact of regional status for the New England Australia wine region and the first comparative analysis of the region with Languedoc‐Roussillon.