This essay is an invitation…
The Machinery of Abstraction
Australia has 566 Local Government Areas (LGAs). In theory, these councils should be the closest and most responsive tier of government. In practice, they are often the most entangled in the bureaucratic performance of care, not the delivery of it.
Let us say a new federal scheme is announced and it is focused on “community resilience.” It originates in Canberra. State agencies translate it into frameworks, templates, and planning guides. These are passed down to councils, where internal staff or external consultants are tasked with “community engagement.”
Engagement is held, then reports are written, diagrams are made and rarely, if ever, is meaningful funding directed to the real work the policy claims to support. The idea becomes a product and its power diluted by process. As theorists like Guy Debord, Ivan Illich, and Henri Lefebvre remind us of spectacle, abstraction, materialism and performance culture:
Debord wrote of governance becoming spectacle, performance over substance.
Illich warned of tools turning into systems of control.
Lefebvre described the rise of abstract space, where lived experience is overwritten by bureaucratic grids.
This is not a crisis of intention. It is a structural condition. But conditions, like soil, can be composted. And that is the work I’ve been quietly doing for well over a decade, redirecting policy briefs toward life.
A Tactic of Integrity: Redirecting the Brief
Twelve years ago, I began applying a concept I learned from the philosopher and design theorist Tony Fry: redirection of the brief. Rather than rejecting state frameworks outright, I learned how to bend them and reground them and in turn redirect them, so they served life, not paperwork.
One example: the Huon Valley Food Hub.
Originally, the council budgeted $70,000 for consultants to conduct “community engagement,” and just $10,000 for implementation. I flipped the model. We ran engagement and co-design in-house, and redirected funds into community activation.
With that $70,000, we delivered:
Ten farm-gate blitzes across the valley
A regenerative food prescription program for twelve families
A First Nations-led garden activation at Sacred Heart College
The Growing Together festival: four seasonal dinners, markets, and seed libraries
This was not just a budget tweak, it was a philosophical pivot which moved funds from consultation to participation in the community. Shifted the culture of outputs towards outcomes.
Grounded in Strategy: A Tasmanian Opportunity
The Future of Local Government Review (2023–24) presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shift how local governance works. With 37 reform recommendations, ranging from voluntary amalgamations and regional service-sharing to participatory democracy and structural review, Tasmania is on the cusp of change.
The Priority Reform Program (2024–26) charts a roadmap for implementation ahead of the 2026 council elections. It offers five key pillars: governance, accountability, democracy, funding, and structure. But success depends on depth, not just design.
The Local Government Association of Tasmania (LGAT) rightly warns that top-down reform risks eroding the very local nuance councils are meant to protect. Likewise, journalists and citizens across Tasmania have resisted forced amalgamations and centralised planning power. We must be careful. We must ask not just how government is structured, but why, for whom, and to what end.
The Officer as Facilitator: Beyond Structural Reform
It’s time for a wake-up call. How can council officers, managers, planners, executives continue to prioritise paperwork over place? Strategy over soil? Reports over relationships?
This isn’t a failure of individuals. It’s a failure of the system, but systems can change.
Too often, local government reform debates get stuck on “how things are carved up”: amalgamations, shared services, and administrative boundaries dominate the conversation. Yet the more fundamental questions about what local government actually does, how it does it, and why these essential activities remain sidelined.
I hear the refrain all too often: “Local government doesn’t have enough funds.” Yet I also see bloated bureaucracies, roles created to shuffle papers rather than nurture communities, and funding lost to endless consultants and reports that gather dust.
No one is calling out the elephant in the room: the culture of local government itself. If local government is to transform, it must start with honest reckoning: recognising waste, shedding performative practices, and shifting budgets away from bureaucracy toward community resilience. Public funds must be reclaimed to support the living, breathing work of care, not the maintenance of paperwork.
In a regenerative future, council officers are not gatekeepers of grants or custodians of compliance. They become facilitators of public trust, partners in community-led change, and stewards of resources that nourish people and place. This requires reform that moves beyond rearranging structures to transforming culture, function, and purpose.
Public money must not simply “deliver programs.” It must build capacity, belonging, and resilience. Here is my usual style I offer some imaginative and practical solutions through a design methodology of scenarios:
Seven Regenerative Scenarios for Local Government
The following scenarios offer a regenerative expansion of Tasmania’s reform process, grounded in lived examples and place-based activation.
1. Local Co-Governed Food & Health Hubs
Reform lever: Reallocate “engagement” budgets into long-term community infrastructure.
Example: Huon Valley Food Hub
Outcome: Funding follows participation, not paperwork. Healing is enabled through food, culture, and care.
2. Community-Owned Energy & Infrastructure Commons
Reform lever: Enable councils to support community-led solar, battery storage, and energy hubs.
Example: Scenario Two: Powering Regeneration (Regen Era Design Studio)
Outcome: Energy becomes a local commons. Resilience becomes a civic responsibility.
3. Regional Planning Alliances for Liveability
Reform lever: Foster inter-council collaborations across bioregions and catchments.
Example: Greater Hobart planning alliances, extended to rural and cultural corridors.
Outcome: Planning is no longer siloed. Local government plans for culture, care, and country, not just roads and bins.
4. Scaled Shared Services with Local Identity
Reform lever: Share admin services while preserving localised leadership and identity.
Example: Regional hubs for climate adaptation, emergency preparedness, asset management.
Outcome: Economies of scale without cultural erasure.
5. Place-Based Co-Design & Workforce Development
Reform lever: Reform officer training; create new jobs rooted in facilitation, regeneration, and cultural capacity.
Example: Co-design fellows, Indigenous planning roles, food system facilitators.
Outcome: Councils grow talent that knows how to work with (not manage) communities.
6. Transparent Accountability & Participatory Democracy
Reform lever: Enshrine a “Charter of Place” in legislation.
Example: Community hearings, budget transparency dashboards, regenerative indicators.
Outcome: Trust rebuilt. Communities become co-authors of their future.
7. Living Policy Pilots for Regeneration
Reform lever: Bundle grants into flexible “living lab” experiments.
Examples: Healing yards, food festivals, seed libraries, tool shares.
Outcome: Pilots judged by lived impact, not admin metrics.
Reclaiming the Public Brief
The word “brief” once meant a letter of trust, an invitation to act on behalf of the common good. What if we reclaimed that? What if the next “policy brief” was not a checklist, but a compost heap: rich with place-based wisdom, complexity, and care?
Let us name what no longer serves: the over-reliance on reports, consultants, abstraction and let us grow what will: capacity, relationship, and shared stewardship.
So I ask again:
What is your business model, local government?
Because mine is this:
Care for place and people.
Participation that grows roots, not paperwork.
Regeneration that feeds both soil and soul.
This is not just a model. It is a way of life.
And if councils adopted even a portion of this approach, we would begin to see a new kind of public service emerge, one rooted in trust, and capable of holding the complexity and beauty of real life.
About the Author
Dr Emily Samuels-Ballantyne (also known as Dr. Demeter) is an eco-philosopher, farmer, and author of the forthcoming series The Spiral Shelves: Living Library of Magical Farm Tasmania. Her work bridges policy design, ecological healing, and the spiritual-cultural renewal of place. She works at the intersection of community resilience, regenerative governance, and embodied stewardship, inviting new myths and models for living well together in times of great change.
