Talk:Local government in Australia

message: I think this article should be merged with Local Government Area.  There is some repetition already and I don't see the point of two articles.  There should be a sub-section with this one dealing with the statistical concept.--Arktos talk 19:49, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't agree with the merger idea.  AFA 23:20, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Why not?--Mattinbgn/ talk 23:27, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Perhaps move Local Government Areas of Queensland to Local Government in Queensland etc.? It would include the list, but would also be an article about local government in the states in general. --Astrokey44 13:57, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger of Local government in Australia and Local Government Area

message: It has been suggested on both the talkpages Talk:Local government areas of Australia and Talk:Local government in Australia back in ancient history that these two articles should be merged, but nothing appears to have happened to it.
I wish to propose merging them:
* The article local government areas of Australia contains much replication of this content here
* The unique content in that article (that given the current split ought not to be here) is little more than a prose restatement of the table and map thumbnails. Detail on all of these matters is provided in the articles on each state. It strikes me as, at best, unnecessary.
* If two articles is felt needed, the other one ought to be essentially list of lists of local government areas in Australia by state or territory, rather than trying to do descriptive work of what's there. (A less cumbersome title, of course, is a good idea; that one is merely meant to be indicative of what the split article ought to be.)
—Felix the Cassowary 23:05, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Edit the other one into lists of LGAs, which I believe is what readers expect from that title. Mdw0 (talk) 00:23, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  New merger discussion 

message: Given some recent edits to this table, I have to ask what is the purpose of this table anyway. In particular the use of the term "council" here as some kind of LGA is concerning me. Local government areas are just that: an area, a boundary on a map. We give them a range of names: boroughs/municipalities/towns/cities/shires/districts/regions etc. In most cases the differences in these names naming don't signify anything much - just differences between the states and often differences over time within states (some of the names date back to the 1800s). About the only difference is that names like boroughs/municipalities/towns/cities generally indicate the presence of a large urban area, where terms like shire are sometimes reserved for more rural areas, but there are almost certainly counter-examples of both. Something that was a thriving mining town in the 1800s might be nothing but cattle grazing today and over time a number of rural areas have been subdivided as suburban housing, and often the names of the LGA do not change to reflect the land use change. But I don't believe that the names town/shire etc matter much in terms of their roles and responsibilities, so I am not sure why we are particularly trying to make such distinctions in this table. It may be that in some states there are distinctions in the roles and responsibilities depending on the name, but if so, that's a state issue that can be explained within the relevant article Local Government in WhateverState.
The use of the term council in this table seems to me to be meaningless. Every LGA has some kind of governing body (usually elected). Again, the names for this vary, but council is the most common one , but there may also be some appointed administrators and other arrangements. But my point is this - areas/boundaries are lines on the map, councils/etc are those who run them. It makes no sense to have rows in this table talking about councils, district councils, regional councils etc.
:Although I agree that it seems nonsensical to refer to the area administered by a particular local government as a "council", Australian governments are unfortunately run by illiterates, so they will have to get used to it.Lathamibird (talk) 06:25, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: It may be that the differently named LGAs have no functional difference between them, and if a RS can be found to support that statement, it should be included. But I think that tabulating the differently named LGAs is interesting gazetteer information and so would seem to belong, per WP:5P1. YBG (talk) 01:27, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Local governments by type and state