Can Australian local government play a meaningful role in the development of social capital in disadvantaged rural communities?

There is now widespread acceptance of the critical role social capital and its attendant dimension of a ‘sense of place’ can play in nurturing poor rural communities and in reversing the current trend towards growing regional economic and social disparities. Although state and federal governments can undoubtedly assist in the accumulation of social capital in poor rural communities, it has been persuasively argued that local communities themselves hold the key to the health of peripheral rural and provincial areas. The question thus arises as to whether local government can indeed foster the development of social capital given its present range of functions. This forms the subject matter of this paper