ABSTRACT
As a highly urbanized country but with large distances to govern, Australia represents a distinctive laboratory for understanding the role of local government websites. In the field of e-governance, the local government website stands out as an information instrument of continuing strategic significance. With respect to the dissemination of both strategic and everyday planning system information, websites have supplanted almost everywhere traditional physical modes of exhibition (Freestone and Amati 2014). An area of particular interest has been ‘e-planning’ mainly because it aligns with neo-liberal aspirations to reduce the cost of land development by increasing the efficiency of the development approvals system (cf. Silva 2010). At the same time, and more generally, local government websites are expected to yield a more engaged polity, greater government accountability and trust (Welch et al. 2005, Welch 2012).
