Policy‐Based Evidence Making in Local Government: The New South Wales’ Municipal Merger Program, 2011 to 2017

Abstract

Contemporary public policymaking relies heavily on commercial consultants for specialised advice. In this paper, we examine the problematic nature of this phenomenon by considering the controversial forced amalgamation programme in New South Wales (NSW) local government over the period 2011 to 2017. By way of a critical examination of two key consultant reports underlying the NSW municipal mergers, we show that the failure of this programme to achieve its intended aims is due in large measure to the nature of the externalised advice on which it was based and the manner in which that advice was solicited from commercial consultants.

Did amalgamation make local government more fit for the future?

“…The results of our first set of regressions confirm our doubts over the wisdom of conducting amalgamations focussed too closely on population metrics alone. In addition, the outcomes from our DiD analyses provide support for the contention that evidence‐free public policymaking is unlikely to succeed (Dollery, 2018 – see also Drew & Dollery, 2015b for a critique of the evidence prior to implementation of Fit for the Future ).…”

“…In particular, it seems crucial that public policymakers understand that entity‐level economies of scale are far from assured and also recognise the importance of community and organisational heterogeneity. Indeed, the findings from our empirical analysis also sound a note of caution regarding the wisdom of accepting commercial consultant assumptions at face value (Dollery, 2018).…”

“…In addition, the amalgamation program – labelled Fit for the Future – was notable for its heavy reliance on commercial consultants, together with assumptions made without adequate empirical foundation. Indeed, it was argued that it was an exercise in ‘policy‐based evidence making’ which provides further good reasons to conduct robust post‐policy evaluation (Dollery, 2018, p. 363).…”

New South Wales State Government Failure? An Empirical Analysis of the Cootamundra Gundagai Regional Council Forced Merger

“…With some exceptions, like the empirical analysis of council size and per capita service costs in NSW by Stephen Soul (2000), the great bulk of Australian empirical studies have found that compulsory municipal mergers have not improved local government performance. In contrast to the earlier emphasis on a descriptive analysis of individual councils as case studies, recent empirical work has focused on the econometric analysis of state-wide datasets to determine the effect of mergers on council performance across specific local government systems (see, for instance, Bell et al (2016); Drew and Dollery PAQ Vol 47 Issue 2 (2014a; 2014b; 2016); Drew et al (2013;2017); Dollery and Drew (2016); Marques et al (2015); McQuestin et al (2017)).…”

“…Australian state local government policymakers typically rely heavily on commercial consultants (Dollery, 2018). Over the past three decades, this practice has become common across public policymaking in much of the developed world for a host of reasons, not least the 'hollowing out' of public sector agencies and the attendant loss of specialised expertise (Rhodes, 1994;.…”