Engaging Culturally Diverse Communities by Engaging Local Government: The LAMP Model

McMillan W¹*

1. Multicultural Affairs Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Local Government is often described as the sphere of government most able to engage communities. This is because its services are more immediate and more accessible to people in a local area, its decision making processes are more responsive to local community need and its democratically elected representatives are more directly connected to the grass roots issues of community debate.

In responding to the need of increasingly culturally diverse communities, this image of responsive local government faces several well known challenges. For example, language and cultural barriers can hinder access to services for some groups in the community. Far from being responsive, the processes of identifying community need can sometimes be solidified into responding to historical precedent rather than emerging realties. The elected Council may itself not be not reflective of the diversity of the community.

Underpinning these general challenges there are two significant institutionally entrenched limitations which hinder the development of the local government sphere as the vehicle for engagement of culturally diverse communities. Firstly, Local Government has historically been responsible for the community’s “hard” infrastructure and has taken on responsibility for the “soft” issues of community development, community relations and community wellbeing with varying degrees of enthusiasm or reluctance. Secondly, Local Government is cautious about accepting responsibility for issues it regards as a State or Commonwealth responsibility without transferral of resources, and it is frequently the case that multiculturalism may be regarded as a policy agenda of the State.

The Local Area Multicultural partnership (LAMP) program is one program which seeks to address these complexities
LAMP is a partnership between the State Government of Queensland and participating local governments designed to improve access to services, to promote an acceptance of diversity in the community and to facilitate engagement between the institutions of local government and the cultural diverse communities they serve. It does this by working with local government to develop strategies that are embedded into the core business of the local government itself. It works to engage culturally diverse communities by engaging local governments in the process of understanding and responding to the issues of diversity in its area of planning responsibility.

This paper/workshop will showcase the LAMP model of partnership between spheres of government and provide practical examples of successful engagement that have been achieved.

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