Local Government Policy

All of our state policy principles and aims should be read alongside our relevant federal policy principles and aims, as well as our state campaigns and federal campaigns.

Principles

1. Local government is a distinct and essential tier of government.
2. Local governments should be fully recognised and empowered in both the Victorian and Australian Constitutions.
3. Consistent with the principle of subsidiarity, public decisions should be made at the most local level capable of making them effectively and without imposing unreasonable costs on neighbouring communities; where decisions are made at higher levels of government, local governments should be meaningfully involved in their development and implementation, especially where local impacts are significant.
4. There should be genuine devolution of greater responsibilities for the development and implementation of policy areas over an expanded range to local governments, along with the ability to raise the funding necessary to undertake them without dependence on grants from state or federal governments.
5. Local governments must be transparent, accountable and democratic.
6. Council decision-making must be free from private financial influence, particularly property development interests.
7. Local council voting rights must adhere to the principle of one resident, one vote, one value.
8. First Nations people have a unique voice and history that must be recognised in local government.
9. Changes to local government boundaries – including amalgamations, deamalgamations and subdivisions – must only take place with the democratic consent of residents.
10. State governments must respect communities of interest – including social, geographic and economic ties – and communities’ demonstrated preferences regarding the structure and boundaries of their local government.
11. Differential rates and special rates schemes can be valid and effective tools for pursuing social, economic and environmental justice goals.
12. Local councils are well placed to contribute to meeting regional, national and global challenges (such as housing and climate change), and should be empowered to do so, rather than being treated primarily as extensions of the state government.

Aims

Democratic representation and electoral reform

1. An election franchise for all local government elections (including the City of Melbourne) that:
   1. grants exactly one vote to all individual permanent residents of the municipality aged 16 years and over;
   2. maintains the principle of all votes being of equal value;
   3. does not extend the right to vote to anyone solely on the basis of their ownership of property in the area; and
   4. does not extend the right to vote to anyone on the basis of their involvement in or representation of a business or other incorporated entity.
2. Measures to maximise access to, and participation in, local government elections, including the provision of in-person voting options and systems that better accommodate mobile populations such as renters and younger voters.
3. Ward-based proportional representation as the default representational model for councils, to balance community of interest considerations with the principles of proportionality and voter enfranchisement.
4. Implement random rotation of candidates’ names across all ballot papers (Robson rotation) to ensure ballot order does not arbitrarily advantage particular candidates.
5. Require that candidates' party affiliations appear on ballot papers in line with state and federal election requirements.
6. Remuneration for councillors that reflects the diverse demands on their time, to reduce the current advantage held by independently wealthy candidates.
7. Authority over the dismissal of individual councillors to reside with the local electorate and with appropriately empowered integrity and oversight mechanisms, rather than with state governments.

Integrity and civic participation

8. Maximum community participation, including in deliberative processes, for the development of strategies, plans and budgets for municipalities.
9. Narrowing of provisions that allow local councils to consider matters in closed session to only those which are absolutely necessary to protect the privacy of individuals, or certain industrial, contractual or legal matters.
10. Local councils to publish policies and plans affecting communities in plain English, as well as in other languages commonly spoken in those communities.
11. A review of all local laws to ensure compliance with the Victorian Charter of Human Rights, particularly where those laws seek to govern public behaviour.
12. Reform overly broad restrictions on councillors that limit their ability to engage in robust political debates and disagreements, particularly where those restrictions exceed the equivalent standards state and federal parliamentarians are held to.
13. All councils to formally recognise and seek to partner with Traditional Owner groups.
14. A ban on donations to councillors and election candidates from those with significant interests in property development and gambling.
15. Local government election campaigns to be subject to strict spending caps.

Boundaries and regional governance

16. Changes to local government boundaries – including amalgamations, deamalgamations and subdivisions – only where they are demonstrably supported by a majority in each community and supported by genuine evidence of environmental, social and/or financial benefit.
17. Support for inter-council boundary reviews where there is demonstrable community support.
18. Replacement of state government-appointed regional bodies that govern or influence planning with representative, publicly accountable bodies that facilitate genuine intergovernmental collaboration.
19. Support for the voluntary association of councils into democratic regional bodies representing coalitions of councils with similar needs (including metropolitan, peri-urban, regional, and rural).

Financial sustainability and reform

20. An end to the practice of cost shifting by state governments to local governments, underscored by a memorandum of understanding that clearly delineates their respective responsibilities.
21. Abolish rate capping, allowing communities (through their council) to democratically decide the scale of services by local government, and the rates they are prepared to pay to fund them.
22. Broadening of the scope of differential rates and special rates schemes that local councils can apply.
23. Ensure councils are empowered to vary rates, as locally appropriate, with a view to ease the burden on owner-occupiers of residential properties, and/or require greater contributions from owners of investment properties, second homes, vacant dwellings or unused land.
24. Removal of service, municipal and special charges that are arbitrary, unfair or regressive.
25. Require all councils to develop and publish 10-year financial and capital works plans, based on established strategy and targets, derived from needs investigation and community consultation.

Planning, climate, housing and advocacy

26. Protect and develop local governments' ability to advocate for the interests of their respective communities to other government bodies and organisations.
27. Planning and environment legislative reform to allow local councils to act more quickly and efficiently to facilitate climate resilient public and private development.
28. Councils to help provide more and better forms of housing, including in their capacity as:
    1. planning authority – by providing reasonable and timely decisions;
    2. community advocate – including by supporting grassroots initiatives, assisting residents experiencing housing-related stress, and promoting public housing developments in particular;
    3. regulator – with responsibilities for rooming and boarding houses and retirement villages; and
    4. landholder and asset manager – by using council-owned land, assets and partnerships to help drive growth in public and genuinely affordable housing.
29. Work with councils to develop a plan that enables them to play a direct role in the delivery of public and genuinely affordable housing, which is:
    1. contingent on restoring councils’ financial capacity and fiscal sustainability, including addressing systemic cost shifting, removing rate capping and using durable financing pathways with state and federal governments to deliver public and genuinely affordable homes;
    2. designed to enable councils to sustainably build, own and/or manage public and genuinely affordable housing to be held as such in perpetuity; and
    3. complementary to, not a substitute for, state and federal governments' obligations to provide housing as a human right.

Further reading

• Community participation and civil society and Constitutional reform and democracy (federal Greens policy principles and aims)
• Protect local democracy (campaign)

Policy principles and aims as adopted by members on 21 February 2026.

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