Why do governments exist? It is a deep philosophical question that people answer with a huge variety of alternatives. Some people believe governments exist to protect people from themselves; others believe they exist to provide a sense of order in the land; and still others think that governments exist to protect the innate human rights we all have.
These ideas all have some legitimacy, but I have a different view. We survived as a species for the bulk of our existence without any form of government. As our population has grown, and as we have interacted with more people, I believe governments exist primarily to deliver additional services to all of us.
Wind the clock back to a very basic view. Pretend that I live in a cave. I know the person who lives in the cave up the hill. I walk past his cave each day when I go to collect my water from the stream that is many miles past his cave. We meet some other people from nearby caves when we collect our water each day. I know that I could dig a trench from the river to my place to service my needs, but that is too much work for the benefit of just my needs. One day, someone has a brilliant idea. What if we all contribute to the digging of the trench which will benefit all of us? We have all made a small contribution and we have ended up with a service that we couldn’t have possibly created with our own individual resources. Dizzy with our initial success, we start to go crazy. We next build some paths that help us walk over our rough country. Again, I couldn’t build the paths myself, but with all of us working together we build a series of paths throughout our area.
Fast forward a few years, and we end up with a number of people that are paid by the rest of the cave people (in food and clothes) to build and maintain paths and trenches and other pieces of infrastructure that benefit all of us. As the village grows, the next perplexing problem is how to decide where the next path is built. Someone who just moved into a new cave on the edges of the village wants his water trench and path built immediately, but it will take months to build these components – and it will only benefit one person. The village gathers together and votes on what the next project for the town builders will be.
As time goes forward and the village grows, it becomes unwieldy to gather the village together for every decision that needs to be made. Eventually, a government is formed. The village elects from its community a small group of people who will form a government of the people, by the people, for the people. The job of the government is to make decisions that will first and foremost benefit the village. In this very basic view, the village can achieve things that are much greater than the individuals could achieve.
Fast forward to our modern society and the basics remain the same. Fresh water is a wonderful convenience of modern society. I turn on the tap in my home each morning and drink clean, odourless, disease-free water. Without a form of government to build water-treatment plants worth tens of millions of dollars, I would still be sourcing water from wells or streams and lighting fires to boil it. The small amount I pay for my water allows a central government to build and maintain a water treatment plant, and pipe that water to my home. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
And so the argument moves forward on a number of fronts. We have roads that we all use, but it would be clumsy and inefficient to tell each resident to build a new piece of road in front of their house when it was built. We have sewerage systems that we all pay small amounts for. In short, when you think about many of the modern conveniences we have, they simply wouldn’t be possible without a central pool of funds to allow the projects to be built. Think of bridges and airports and schools and hospitals and libraries and the list goes on.
As society has progressed, governments began to also play an important role in maintaining certain societal standards for our infrastructure. In the same way that we want to feel safe when we drive over a bridge, there is also an expectation that if I buy a house that someone else has built, it will be built to a certain standard and I can feel confident it won’t blow down when a windy day comes along. I also want to be sure if I build a house in a certain area that an industrial operation functioning around the clock won’t be built next to my house, or that a feedlot with some interesting odours won’t occupy the vacant block next to me.
This is a particular area that seems to capture a lot of attention in the public. The requirement for a development application (DA) to be lodged with Council for citizens to be able to perform building works. I typically see Council criticised for being too slow and obstructive with DAs, while the same person will then criticise Council for always approving controversial developments.
Looking at the philosophical picture, the community has decided that there needs to be some regulation in relation to building works. That regulation takes the form of an application to perform development. The application considers items such as the correct location to build a development (zoning) right through to the connections that will serve the development and the physical building itself. Dubbo City Council processed 575 DAs in 2011 ranging in scale from residential pergolas through to multi-level office buildings. I have never met a planning staff member or a Councillor who sits awake at night trying to work out how to make development difficult, or block development, or encourage ‘bad’ developments.
When you see overseas footage of buildings collapsing due to poor building standards or see an industrial workshop next to a shopping mall, think about the type of society we want to create for ourselves to live in.
Ultimately, government in Australia, and local government in particular, tries to deliver the services and outcomes to residents that benefit the majority. The careful planning process involved with the lodging and handling of a DA is just one component that the community has identified and said they want outcomes to benefit the greater good of individuals.
Tell me your philosophical view of governments at mayor@dubbo.nsw.gov.au.
Clr Mathew Dickerson
Mayor of the City of Dubbo