How is a local council established and run?

A local council in Australia is established under state or territory Local Government Acts and is run by elected mayors and councillors who make decisions about local services and infrastructure. The Local Government Acts of each jurisdiction set the procedures for establishment, elections, council operations, and dissolution.

Councils are established by state or territory legislation declaring the boundaries of each local government area, the size of the council (typically 5 to 15 councillors), the method of electing the mayor (some states have directly elected mayors, others have mayors elected by the council from among councillors), and the operational rules. NSW operates under the Local Government Act 1993, Victoria under the Local Government Act 2020, Queensland under the Local Government Act 2009, and equivalents in other states. The 537 councils across Australia range from inner-city Melbourne (population about 169,000) to remote outback shires covering hundreds of thousands of square kilometres with only a few thousand residents.

Elections happen typically every three or four years, depending on the state. Most states use voluntary voting at local elections (Victoria and Tasmania are the exceptions, using compulsory voting). Candidates are usually independents but increasingly stand as party-endorsed candidates or as members of local resident or community tickets. Mayors are either directly elected by the community or chosen by the council from among the elected councillors, depending on the state and the specific council.

Councils operate through regular meetings, with most decisions made in public sessions. Council decisions are typically implemented by a professional Chief Executive Officer (CEO, sometimes called the General Manager) appointed by the council, who leads the council staff. State and territory Ministers for Local Government supervise the local government system, with powers to dismiss councils in cases of serious misconduct or financial failure and to appoint administrators. Major recent dismissals include the Whitsunday Regional Council (Queensland, 2024), various metropolitan and rural councils across decades in NSW and Victoria, and the Auburn City Council in NSW after the 2017 Inquiry into former councillor Salim Mehajer. State-based Local Government Codes of Conduct apply to mayors and councillors, with breaches investigated by independent agencies.