What the law says, in the law’s own words
There is a belief, widely held and rarely examined, that when your local council sends you a notice, it does so with the authority of Government behind it. That the letter carries the weight of the State. That the officer who signs it speaks with something approaching official power.
This article does not ask you to take anyone’s word for it. It asks you to read four provisions of law – provisions that are publicly available, free to access, and require no legal training to understand. When you have read them, you will have the answer.
What is the Crown?
Before looking at what councils are, it helps to be clear about what the Crown is.
The Crown is the constitutional embodiment of sovereign authority in Australia. It is the source from which government power flows. When the State acts – when it makes law, when it enforces law, when it exercises executive authority – it does so as the Crown. The Crown owns land that has not been granted to anyone. The Crown holds the revenues of the State. The Crown’s authority traces an unbroken line through the Constitution to the King himself.
Crown status carries with it specific legal privileges and immunities that ordinary bodies corporate do not possess. That distinction matters enormously when a body is asserting authority over you and your land.
The four provisions
Provision one: Local Government Act 1995 (WA), section 1.6
Section 1.6 sits on the very first page of the Act, before any substantive content. It reads, in full:
“This Act does not bind the Crown except to the extent expressly stated in this Act.”
Read that sentence again. The Act that creates councils – that defines their powers, their structure, and their authority – does not bind the Crown.
If councils were the Crown, or part of the Crown, or an arm of the Crown, that sentence would be legally impossible. You cannot write a law that simultaneously creates an entity as part of the Crown and also declares that it does not bind the Crown. The law would be contradicting itself on its own first page.
Section 1.6 is the Act’s own admission that councils and the Crown are two legally separate things. The Act governs the council. It does not govern the Crown. They are different.
Provision two: Local Government Act 1995 (WA), section 2.5
The very next relevant section is titled, simply and unambiguously: “Local governments created as bodies corporate.”
Not Crown agencies. Not arms of the Crown. Not instrumentalities of the State. Bodies corporate.
A body corporate is a legal entity – like a company or an incorporated association – that can own property, enter contracts, sue and be sued, and hold rights and obligations in its own name. It has its own legal personality, separate from the people who run it and separate from the entity that created it by statute.
The State Parliament created local governments as bodies corporate. That choice of words is not accidental. Bodies corporate are legally distinct from the State. They are not the Crown.
Provision three: Local Government Act 1993 (NSW), section 220
Legislators in New South Wales decided to put the matter beyond any possible doubt. Section 220 of the New South Wales equivalent of the Local Government Act states explicitly and in direct terms:
“A council does not have the status, privileges and immunities of the Crown (including the State and the Government of the State).”
There is no ambiguity in that sentence. It does not say councils are similar to the Crown but slightly different. It does not say councils share some Crown attributes but not others. It says a council does not have the status of the Crown. It does not have the privileges of the Crown. It does not have the immunities of the Crown.
The New South Wales Parliament chose to write that into the Act because the distinction matters. If it did not matter, they would not have written it.
Provision four: The definition of employee
The consequences for council officers and employees follow directly. The Local Government Act 1995 (WA) defines an employee as a person employed by a local government under section 5.36. Employed by the local government – the body corporate.
Not employed by the Crown. Not employed by the State. Not a public servant in the constitutional sense. Not a Crown officer.
A council employee’s employer is the body corporate. Their authority derives from the powers the statute gives to that body corporate within its defined limits. When a council officer writes to you, they write as an employee of a body corporate exercising statutory administrative powers – not as a Crown officer carrying the authority of the sovereign State.
What this means in plain English
When your council sends you a letter asserting authority over your property, that letter is not a communication from the Crown. It is a communication from a body corporate – a statutory entity created by the State Parliament, operating within the limits Parliament set, whose own governing Act declares it does not bind the Crown.
The officer who signs that letter is an employee of the body corporate. Not a Crown officer. Not a public servant in the constitutional sense. An employee, with all the ordinary limitations that brings.
The notice itself is an administrative act of a statutory body. It is not a judicial determination. No court has found anything. No Crown authority has commanded anything. A body corporate has asserted something – and like any assertion made by any legal entity, it requires demonstrated authority before it carries enforceable weight.
The test anyone can apply
These provisions are not hidden. They are publicly available at no cost on every State’s legislation website. The Local Government Act of your State is searchable online. If you search section by section for the words “Crown,” “body corporate,” and “employee,” you will find the same structure in every Australian jurisdiction. The precise wording varies. The legal effect does not.
Find the provision that tells you whether the Act binds the Crown. Find the provision that tells you what legal form the council takes. Find the definition of employee. Read those three things. You will have your answer in fifteen minutes, using only the law itself as your source.
The law does not say councils are the Crown. The law says the opposite. The Act that governs councils does not even bind the Crown – because the Crown and the council are different things.
That is not an argument or an opinion. It is what the legislation says, on its own pages, in its own words.
This article draws on the Local Government Act 1995 (WA) sections 1.6, 2.5 and 5.36, and the Local Government Act 1993 (NSW) section 220. All provisions are publicly available at no cost on the relevant State legislation websites. The legal position described applies in substantially equivalent form across all Australian States and Territories. Nothing in this article constitutes legal advice.
Last Updated 5 months ago
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