Community Engagement: Who for?

Boxelaar L¹*, Paine M¹ and Beilin R¹

1. University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia

Governments in Australia are increasingly concerned with engaging the broader community in the policy process. Emphasis on local knowledge and community empowerment is often characteristic of community engagement discourse. This paper discusses research into a Victorian state government project that aimed to engage a diversity of stakeholders in the rural development process, including community groups, citizens, industry stakeholders and other agencies. The findings of this research indicate that despite the best intentions of those involved in the project, it was implemented in a way that led to a primary focus on serving the needs of government. The research demonstrates that community engagement can be facilitated through a process of assimilation, whereby diversity and differences of community participants are compromised. The paper will draw on a number of examples to illustrate this point and will discuss the implications in terms of the organisational capacity required to implement community based approaches to rural development. In particular it focuses on the requirements for creation of genuine community participation and empowerment.

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