Recommendations

Rates and revenue reform 

1. Abolish the local government rate cap.
2. Shift council rates from capital-improved value to land value.
3. Realign revenue from state government initiatives such as the Development Facilitation Program (DFP) to reduce adversarial relationships between state and local government bodies.

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Better economic tools for local government 

4. Provide best-practice policy assessment frameworks that outline common considerations and how to measure them consistently across councils.
5. Amend the Local Government Act 2020 to require cost-benefit analyses for significant proposed policy and rule changes.
6. Create a “public consultancy” within the State Government to assist local councils with strategic work. 
7. Implement internal tender-first provisions and prohibit the acceptance by councils of “free lunches” from private consultancy firms. 

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Toward metropolitan governance‍

8. Amalgamate all Greater Melbourne councils into a metropolitan-wide government in the style of that seen in Auckland, Brisbane and London.
   • Implement a local board structure to allow local-level decision-making to remain intact. 
9. Roll back the 2018 shift towards single-member wards and reinstate multi-member wards.