The states and the Northern Territory are divided into local government areas, which may be called cities, shires, towns or municipalities. Each has a council, and citizens in the area elect their councillors. Councils handle local roads and footpaths, rubbish collection, parks and pools, libraries and halls, building permits, animal and noise control, and food inspection. The Australian Capital Territory is the exception — its government performs local government functions.
Local government is the level of government most people deal with every week and revise least. You put out a bin, walk on a footpath, take a child to a council pool, and none of it registers as a testable topic.
It is one, and questions about it are usually not "what is a council" but "which level of government does this". That makes the boundaries more important than the definitions.
What a local government area is
The states and the Northern Territory are divided into local government areas, which may be called cities, shires, towns or municipalities. Each area has its own local council.
Councils are responsible for planning and delivering services to their local community, and citizens in each local government area vote to elect their local councillors.
Two details in that are worth pinning down. The four names — city, shire, town, municipality — describe the same kind of thing under different labels, so a question naming a "shire" is asking about local government. And it is the states and the Northern Territory that are divided this way, which sets up the exception below.
The ACT is the exception
The booklet's list of local government responsibilities is headed "Local governments (and the Australian Capital Territory Government)".
That parenthesis is the whole point. The Australian Capital Territory does not have a separate layer of councils in the way the states and the Northern Territory do — the ACT Government performs those functions itself.
It is a small fact that answers a specific question, and it pairs neatly with another ACT detail from elsewhere in the material: the Australian Federal Police does general police work in the ACT rather than a separate territory force. The ACT is consistently the place where the usual three-layer structure is compressed.
What councils are responsible for
The full list from Australian Citizenship: Our Common Bond is longer than most people expect. Grouping it makes it stick:
Getting around locally
- street signs and traffic controls
- local roads, footpaths and bridges
- drains
Places to go
- parks, playgrounds, swimming pools and sports grounds
- camping grounds and caravan parks
- local libraries, halls and community centres
Keeping the area in order
- rubbish collection
- noise and animal control
- food and meat inspection
Planning and permits
- building permits
- social planning
- local environmental issues
- certain child-care and aged-care issues
The boundaries that generate questions
The booklet says the main difference between the three levels is that, although some responsibilities may overlap, each level generally provides different services. The overlap is where questions live.
Roads
Local government handles local roads, footpaths and bridges. State and territory governments handle roads and railways.
Both lists contain roads. The word that distinguishes them is local, and railways belong only to the state list.
Libraries and schools
Local government runs local libraries, halls and community centres. State and territory governments run schools.
These feel like they belong together and they do not. Education is a state responsibility; the library down the road is a council one.
Police, ambulances and animal control
State and territory governments are responsible for police and ambulance services. Local government handles noise and animal control.
If the scenario involves law enforcement or emergency medical care, it is state. If it involves a barking dog or a loud party, it is council.
Everything national
The Australian Government's list is the easiest to separate because its items are national in character: taxation, national economic management, immigration and citizenship, employment assistance, postal services and the communications network, social security including pensions and family support, defence, trade and commerce, airports and air safety, and foreign affairs.
Note that immigration and citizenship sits here. Your own citizenship application is being decided by the Australian Government, not a state or a council — an easy question to get right if you make the connection.
Also note airports and air safety at the national level against public transport at the state level. Aviation is federal; buses and trains are not.
Voting for your council
Citizens in each local government area vote to elect their councillors.
There is a qualification worth learning precisely: voting is compulsory in federal and state or territory elections, and it may not be compulsory to vote in local government elections in some states.
Read that carefully. It does not say local voting is optional everywhere. It says it may not be compulsory in some states — a hedged statement, and questions in this area reward the hedge rather than a flat answer in either direction.
A quick way to sort any service
When a question names a service and asks which level provides it, three questions resolve almost all of them:
- Is it national in scope? Defence, foreign affairs, immigration, pensions, post, aviation — Australian Government.
- Is it a major public system? Hospitals, schools, police, ambulances, railways, public transport, forestry — state or territory.
- Could you walk to it? Footpaths, parks, pools, libraries, bins, local roads, building permits — council.
That third test is imprecise as civics and reliable as a memory aid, which is what you need under a 45-minute clock.
Check yourself
- What four names can a local government area go by?
- Which parts of Australia are divided into local government areas?
- Which government performs local government functions in the ACT?
- Who elects local councillors?
- Which level is responsible for railways? For local roads?
- Which level runs schools? Which runs libraries?
- Which level is responsible for immigration and citizenship?
- Is voting in local government elections compulsory?
Before the test
Learn the council list once, then spend your time on the boundaries — roads, libraries against schools, police against animal control. Those are what questions are built from.
Our guides to the rights of an Australian citizen and to Australian values questions cover the neighbouring material. Home Affairs publishes the booklet and updates it from time to time, so read the current edition on the official website.