📣 Summary Report: The Local Government Act 2020 Is Failing Victorians

By Council Watch | April 2025

At its core, the Local Government Act 2020 is a document of strategic precision — not democratic principle.

Marketed as a “modernisation” of local governance in Victoria, the Act in practice is a legislative straightjacket: conceived, drafted, and implemented through a bureaucratic lens to preserve administrative control and insulate the machinery of local government from community-driven disruption.

It is a law designed by insiders to protect insiders, not to empower the public, and certainly not to equip elected councillors to act as meaningful agents of change.

📜 The Core Flaw: Governance Without Representation

The Act elevates governance principles — strategic alignment, service delivery, financial sustainability — over democratic imperatives like advocacy, accountability, and responsiveness to the community.

On paper, it appears progressive: “supporting transparency,” “defining roles,” “strengthening integrity.” But in practice, it disempowers elected councillors — reducing them to procedural observers of executive function.

This is no accident. The Act was crafted with the input of senior council officers, Local Government Victoria bureaucrats, and compliance experts — not communities. It reflects a managerial worldview: that councils exist to deliver services, not to solve problems; that stability is more important than scrutiny; and that councillors must be managed, not empowered.

It is a law built to serve administration — not democracy.

🎭 The Illusion of Councillor Power

Across Victoria, hundreds of candidates contest local elections every four years, motivated by a desire to improve roads, cut waste, tackle housing, or amplify community voices.

But under the Local Government Act 2020, most will find they have no real power to achieve any of it.

The legislation relegates councillors to “strategic oversight” — a carefully worded phrase that means councillors can vote on high-level plans and budgets, but are expected to stay out of service delivery, staffing, operational decision-making, and policy detail.

Any councillor who questions an officer in public, asks for more information, or challenges a report can quickly find themselves accused of:

• Breaching the Governance Rules

• Violating the Councillor Code of Conduct

• Interfering with operational matters — a capital offence under the Act’s logic

Meanwhile, CEOs are given sweeping powers with little transparency. Their decisions are rarely overturned, their accountability is opaque, and councillors are instructed to treat them as autonomous executives — even as they oversee $100 million budgets and make decisions with massive community impacts.

In short: the public elects councillors to fix things, but the Act tells them they must not touch the machinery.

🧱 Bureaucratic Fortress: What the Monitor Reports Reveal

The growing stack of Municipal Monitor reports across the state reveal a stark pattern: not that councillors are overstepping, but that bureaucracies are actively resisting scrutiny.

• In Darebin, councillors who questioned officer reports were met with obstruction, legal complaints, and administrative gaslighting​.

• In Whittlesea, dysfunction exploded not because councillors were unprofessional, but because factionalism was weaponised within a structure that gave them no path to resolve it​.

• In Glenelg, a basic dispute over Christmas lights ended in the CEO’s resignation and a wave of community outrage — with no mechanisms under the Act to hold administrators accountable​.

• In Colac Otway, councillors spoke openly of being sidelined while CEOs and officers used procedure as a shield from democratic challenge​.

These reports consistently fail to question the architecture of the Act itself — a silence that speaks volumes. The dysfunction is baked into the system. Councillors are not failing because they are incapable — they are failing because the legislative structure was never designed to let them succeed.

⚠️ The Inconvenient Truth: This Is Not Local Government for the People

The Local Government Act is not aligned with what communities want. Victorians expect their councillors to:

• Fight for better roads, services, and planning outcomes

• Advocate on local issues

• Represent their voice on the big decisions

• Ask hard questions and challenge bureaucratic complacency

Instead, the Act demands that councillors:

• Attend briefings quietly

• Tick off strategic documents

• Avoid “interfering” with operations

• Defer to CEOs and senior officers on everything that actually matters

It is a top-down, compliance-first regime that has more in common with corporate boardrooms than community representation. And it is fundamentally misaligned with democratic reality.

💥 The Brutal Conclusion: Reformers Need Not Apply

If you are a prospective councillor running on a platform to “clean up council”, “cut waste”, or “fix local problems” — be warned:

Under the Local Government Act 2020, you will not be permitted to do any of that.

You will be told:

• “That’s operational”

• “That’s not your role”

• “The CEO has discretion on that”

• “We can’t discuss that in public”

And if you push too hard, you may find yourself under investigation — not for corruption, but for caring too much.

In its current form, the Act ensures that no amount of public mandate can overcome administrative resistance.

🛠️ Rewriting the Rules: What Real Reform Looks Like

To restore local democracy, Victoria must shift power away from bureaucracy and back toward the people. That means:

1. Redefining the Councillor Role - Make councillors legitimate participants in oversight, not ceremonial bystanders.

2. Empowering Council to Hold CEOs Accountable - CEOs should answer to the council — not manage it from above.

3. Embedding Community Power into Governance - Make citizen priorities a legislative requirement, not a PR exercise.

4. Creating a Public-Facing Integrity Office for Local Government - Independent oversight shouldn’t only investigate councillors — it should scrutinise officers too.

5. Mandating Transparency in Executive Decisions - CEO decisions on staffing, procurement, and planning should be subject to public visibility.

🧨 Final Word: The Act Must Be Torn Down to Build Democracy Up

The Local Government Act 2020 does not support community leadership — it neutralises it. It was not written to empower citizens or elevate democracy. It was written to protect bureaucracies from public disruption.

Until that changes, Victorian local government will continue to fail those it was meant to serve — not because of bad councillors, but because of a law that never wanted them to lead.