Multi-sectoral Collaboration in Central Queensland: Bringing the State Back in?

Loechel B¹*, Cheshire L¹* and Lawrence G¹*

1. School of Social Science, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

In recent years, a wave of public sector reform, emphasising multi-sectoral collaboration, ‘joined-up’ government and community engagement has swept through Australia and other advanced liberal nations. To a large extent, this is consistent with a well-documented shift in the way contemporary society is governed – that is, from a model of government administration to one of governance in which state and non-state actors work ‘in partnership’ to achieve particular outcomes. This, in turn, has been associated with discourses of ‘small government’, ‘active citizenship’ and the ‘rolling back’ of the state. Yet, what appears to be emerging more recently is a call for a more active and interventionist state, albeit one that is more participatory and responsive to local needs.

This paper forms part of an ARC-funded ‘Engaged Government’ project: a large, collaborative research project on government-community engagement for regional outcomes, which involves four Queensland government departments and three universities. Drawing on Foucauldian governmentality theory, the paper suggests that these changes to state activity should not be interpreted as an attempt by political authorities to govern more, or to govern less, simply by rolling the state in and out at will. Rather, it reflects a desire by state agencies to govern better by continuously posing themselves questions such as who should be governed? How? And by whom? This paper considers these questions in the context of various attempts at multi-sectoral collaboration in Central Queensland, and identifies potential incompatibilities between state and community objectives, which may render this new approach problematic.

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