The culture of rural local government, and rural communities more broadly, has been one in which subservience to the state government is understood—in the sense that it is taken for granted as well as in the sense of familiarity. Debates about rural restructuring among researchers and practitioners, including small-town ‘revivalists’ (Gray 2005a) who seek to reverse the detrimental economic and social effects of change, illuminate this culture. The researchers do so as they implicitly propose that exerting influence over state governments either amounts to expression of autonomy or at least indicates something other than an absolute power relationship as rural interests are ‘translated’ (see Herbert-Cheshire 2003) rather than exerted independently. The practitioners are similar as they identify the culture to be changed as one of dependency identifiable among individuals and expressed as the absence of entrepreneurialism. Both groups—the researchers and the activists—are at least partly correct in what they see and what they conclude. The problem is that they tend to be a little myopic. Moreover, they conflate political powerlessness and economic passivity.

Those who perceive a power structure see it in terms of struggle against central government, while those who take an apolitical view see business failure amid opportunity. Among those who acknowledge local–central power relations, Herbert-Cheshire (2003:255) identifies previous research that shows ‘local people to negotiate, challenge and ultimately transform rural policy’ but not create policy for themselves as a truly autonomous organisation might be expected to do. In her own research, Herbert-Cheshire uses actor network theory to circumvent conceptualisation of power in terms of either passivity or resistance and admits the possibility that those in power might be displaced by the translation of interests towards something more consistent with those of the formerly powerless. Herbert-Cheshire presents a scenario in which local people are able to persuade a state government to modify and reverse its decisions to terminate a train service and close a courthouse. She presents another scenario through which local people persuade a Commonwealth Government department to change an industry-support funding formula.

While these cases certainly illustrate ‘translation’ and validate the rejection of absolute conceptualisations of power, it is notable that in neither instance did a community act without reference to a central government. They apparently did not, for example, attempt to recreate the courthouse for themselves, start their own freight service or establish their own sources for industry support. In some parallel analysis, Herbert-Cheshire and Higgins (2004) contrast small rural communities in terms of the response to decline as occurring in a single dimension: one community heeding the neo-liberal dictum of the revivalists and redefining itself as entrepreneurial while the other remains reactive to government. They contrast entrepreneurialism with continuing political weakness rather than, as they might, distilling two dimensions: economic passivity–activity and political subservience–autonomy. An economically active, entrepreneurial community can remain dependent, while it is conceivable, though admittedly unlikely given the structure and culture of local government, that an economically passive community could have some autonomy.

In Herbert-Cheshire’s comparison, the apparently economically successful community ceased or reduced its level of protest to government while the unsuccessful case chose to continue traditional anti-government protest, contributing further to its own illegitimacy in the neo-liberal ideological framework. The latter also did what we might predict given the tradition of political/administrative subservience. What, however, of the former entrepreneurial and apparently successful community? Herbert-Cheshire and Higgins attributed the success to the enrolment of outside expertise, which, under neo-liberal logic, was able to change the attitude of local people away from dependency towards entrepreneurialism. They use success in obtaining central government grant funding as an indicator of reform and renewal, as well as some business development. As Herbert-Cheshire and Higgins note, however, this success has not gone so far as reversing population decline and the problems of agricultural industries. It has more to do with the ability of neo-liberal rhetoric to define success and, I would add, its capacity to distract attention from the political subservience–autonomy dimension.

In political terms, the successful community acted neither independently nor in concert with other communities. It might have changed its economic world view, but only at the prompting of central government and apparently only in terms of its perception of local business. This observation prompts, at very least, some critical questioning of whether or not this ‘success’, which Herbert-Cheshire and Higgins show to be at least questionable, will prove to be in the community’s long-term interests. It also prompts questioning of this world view in which community action is seen only as entrepreneurialism to the denigration of political action, or the viewing of it as such becomes legitimate. From the perspective of the history of Australian administrative tradition, this looks like the untranslated (Herbert-Cheshire 2004) exercise of metropolitan power. For present purposes, the important point is that although an entrepreneurial culture seems to have emerged or an old one has been strengthened, the relationship with government has not changed.

Is there any evidence of the relationship changing? Local government has been changed by amalgamation of small councils into large ones, most dramatically in Victoria. O’Toole and Burdess (2004) portrayed this as the emergence of a new mode of governance because a variety of community organisations grew in Victoria in response to local government amalgamations and the consequent loss by some local communities of their own council. Changes to local government have been and are being considered and implemented in other states, almost always involving amalgamation. There is no evidence that amalgamations create politically stronger institutions in their relations with central government. O’Toole and Burdess (2004) discuss change in terms of the creation of community organisations that react to enlarged local government in the familiar way—just as local government is reactive to state government.

Of course it is easy to make accusations of passivity from a distance in time and space, with no knowledge of the circumstances other than the communities being small and suffering from restructuring. It is also absurd to expect a small community to establish its own legal system or development funding independently of central government. It is, however, reasonable to surmise, for purposes of further investigation, that the traditional world view of the community members would not have prompted them to consider non-government (as Herbert-Cheshire and Higgins suggest) or locally governed alternatives. It is hard to see success in obtaining central government funding as a sure step towards autonomy. Very many small rural communities have organised themselves to retain or develop local industries (Cocklin and Dibden 2005). Perhaps the best type, or certainly best-known example, of a non-government alternative is that promoted by the Bendigo Bank. The Bendigo Bank works in partnership with local people to re-establish branches in small towns after the metropolitan banks have withdrawn. While only partially localised, the rise of Bendigo Bank branches in small towns does illustrate local participation in development without central government involvement. It hints at what might be done with greater cooperation and resource pooling among rural communities.

This view has a point of consistency with those who advocate community self-help and entrepreneurship: ‘revivalists’, as apparent in Kenyon and Black (2001) and Stoeckel (1998). From this perspective, the correct response to neo-liberalism and restructuring is the development of local business and industry of the kind that Herbert-Cheshire and Higgins identify in their successful case. This does not contradict the power relationship models, but it does ignore the history of development through which rural localities have been created as political dependencies of the metropolitan cities. It is frequently and reasonably criticised for promoting or at least risking victim blaming. Nevertheless, it is worth noting for the way it points towards a culture in which local self-governance does not come to mind as a response to economic and social decline. The existence of work such as Kenyon and Black’s and exhortations like that of Stoeckel’s implies a cultural problem, though not necessarily one that can be solved at the individual level, and not without reference to the development of rural local cultures in a political relationship with metropolitan Australia.