Australian regional policy and its critics

This paper describes the principles of regional policy in Australia, focusing on Commonwealth policy in New South Wales. The author discusses how a consensus in policy approach has developed across Australia, sharing policy characteristics such as strategic intervention, decentralised partnership development, and 'local solutions to local problems'. He outlines the criticisms levelled against current policy, broadly summarised as those who think the government does too much, and those who think it does too little, and addresses their assumptions and assertions.