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The Report of the Inquiry into water services in non-metropolitan New South Wales recommended that the state's local water utilities be ‘aggregated’ into ‘regional groups organised either by means of a “binding alliance” model, a “council-owned regional water corporation” model, or the “status quo for some large general purpose councils and county councils”. This paper critically examines these recommendations in the light of existing theoretical and empirical literature on structural reform in Australian local government generally, and water-utility reform specifically.
[1] Centre for Local Government, University of New England, bdollery@une.edu.au. The author would like to thank an anonymous referee as well as the Editor for helpful comments on an earlier draft of the paper.