No doubt my colleagues in this venture will attest to the wide range of contributions which Robert Parker and Dick Spann have made to the field of public administration. I have benefited greatly from these contributions, as well as from discussions with both, in particular from those with Dick Spann during my period in the Department of Government and Public Administration at the University of Sydney. However, the breadth of their coverage has not been without some cost to the field, and in this paper I want to examine their influence on the area which I know best, that of local government.