Some postcodes in Australia have been disadvantaged for generations. High unemployment, poor health outcomes, low educational attainment, inadequate housing — the problems cluster geographically and persist stubbornly despite decades of government programs.

Place-based approaches — interventions designed for and implemented within specific communities rather than applied uniformly across the country — have been promoted as the answer. And some have produced genuine results. But the track record is mixed, and the lessons of what works and what doesn’t deserve more attention than they typically receive.

What place-based means

A genuinely place-based approach has several characteristics that distinguish it from standard program delivery.

It’s designed with the community, not for the community. Local people are involved in identifying problems, designing solutions, and making decisions about resource allocation.

It addresses multiple issues simultaneously. Disadvantage is interconnected — employment, health, housing, education, and social connection all affect each other. Addressing one in isolation rarely produces lasting change.

It takes a long view. Entrenched disadvantage didn’t develop overnight and won’t be resolved in a three-year funding cycle. Effective place-based approaches require sustained investment over ten, fifteen, or twenty years.

It coordinates multiple actors. Government agencies, nonprofits, businesses, and community organisations all contribute, ideally with shared goals and complementary efforts rather than duplicated services.

What’s worked in Australia

Several Australian place-based initiatives have produced measurable results.

Logan Together in Queensland brought together over 100 organisations to focus on outcomes for children from birth to eight in the Logan region. The initiative used a collective impact model with shared measurement and coordinated action. Early results showed improvements in kindergarten attendance, developmental outcomes, and service coordination.

Go Goldfields in central Victoria focused on improving outcomes for children and young people in a rural region with significant disadvantage. The initiative reported improvements in school attendance, early childhood development, and community engagement.

Stronger Places, Stronger People is a federal government place-based initiative operating in ten communities across Australia. While still relatively early in its implementation, the model’s emphasis on community governance and collective impact aligns with evidence about effective place-based approaches.

What these successful initiatives have in common is sustained commitment, genuine community governance, shared measurement across multiple organisations, and a focus on systemic change rather than individual programs.

What hasn’t worked

The failures are instructive.

Short-term funding cycles. Place-based initiatives that are funded for three years and then discontinued produce limited lasting change. Entrenched disadvantage requires sustained investment, and stop-start funding creates community fatigue and distrust.

Government-driven without community ownership. Initiatives designed in Canberra or state capitals and imposed on communities without genuine local governance tend to produce compliance rather than engagement. Community ownership isn’t optional — it’s the mechanism through which place-based approaches actually work.

Single-issue focus. Programs that address employment but ignore housing, or health but ignore education, miss the interconnected nature of disadvantage. Effective place-based approaches work across multiple domains simultaneously.

Evaluation that measures activity, not outcomes. Many place-based initiatives can tell you how many programs were delivered and how many people participated. Fewer can tell you whether those programs actually changed outcomes. Without rigorous outcome measurement, it’s impossible to know what’s working and adjust accordingly.

The governance challenge

The most difficult aspect of place-based work is governance. Who decides? How are decisions made? How is accountability maintained when multiple organisations with different mandates, funding sources, and reporting requirements are trying to work together?

Effective governance models typically include genuine community representation (not tokenistic consultation), a backbone organisation that coordinates activities and maintains momentum, shared data and measurement systems, and formal agreements between participating organisations about roles, responsibilities, and resource allocation.

This is hard to establish and even harder to maintain over the extended timeframes that place-based approaches require. Leadership turnover, funding changes, political cycles, and organisational restructures all threaten governance continuity.

The funding structure problem

Current government funding structures work against place-based approaches. Funding is typically program-based (allocated to specific activities), time-limited (three to five years), siloed (managed by individual departments), and competitive (organisations compete rather than collaborate).

Effective place-based approaches need pooled funding (from multiple sources into a common pot), long-term commitment (ten or more years), cross-departmental coordination, and collaborative allocation (decisions made with the community about how resources are deployed).

Some Australian governments are experimenting with more flexible funding models, but the structural barriers remain significant.

What we should do differently

If Australia is serious about reducing place-based disadvantage, several changes are needed.

Commit to genuine long-term investment in the communities with the greatest need. Not three-year pilots, but ten-year programs with committed funding and political support.

Put communities in charge. Not as consultants or advisors, but as decision-makers. This means ceding control, which is uncomfortable for governments and large organisations but essential for effectiveness.

Invest in measurement and learning. Place-based approaches are complex, and what works in one community may not work in another. Rigorous evaluation and knowledge-sharing across communities are essential.

And accept that this is hard, slow work. There are no quick wins in addressing entrenched disadvantage. The communities that have been left behind deserve sustained attention, not another pilot program.