Communities revive local assets through co-operative ownership – as featured on ABC NewsRadio

12 December 2025

Speaking on ABC NewsRadio Drive on Monday, 8 December, BCCM CEO Melina Morrison highlighted a growing trend of communities reclaiming local assets through co-operative ownership. Her comments coincided with the Castlemaine Community Investment Co-operative Ltd completing the purchase of a 150-year-old Gold Rush era pub building known locally as the Hub, financed without a bank loan.

“Well, it works like any other business. You need a group of people with a shared vision. So think of your entrepreneurs. They need some sort of startup capital or, indeed their own sweat equity, as we sometimes call it, but you need funds to start a business. You need skills and capacity, but most important, you need a business plan.”

“Because co-operatives don’t have shareholders, they need members to drive that vision and they’re the people who are going to use or take the benefit from this shared business.”

Melina emphasised that co-operatives often emerge where communities gather to solve shared problems.

“And we’re seeing the pendulum swing back to community control and management.”

“Communities form co-operatives because they need a solution to a shared problem. Sometimes that can be market failure, they simply can’t get something like a petrol station isn’t operating anymore, they don’t have a butcher store, they don’t have a supermarket. They need to be able to find a way to address that market failure and to access these services. So what starts in the pub and sometimes then becomes the pub as their asset is a cooperative.”

There are almost 2,000 co-ops nationally, and many Australians engage with member owned enterprises every day through roadside assistance, banking and retail co-ops. Melina noted a wider global swing toward local ownership and governance.

“As more and more communities realise that the cavalry isn’t coming and they need to do something for themselves, they’re turning to this tried and tested model.”

Communities are deploying co-operatives to own and operate diverse assets, renewable energy, retail, community halls and theatres, food production and hospitality, with local boards and community aligned business plans sustaining assets over time.

Through BCCM’s Care Together program, communities are applying the co-operative model to maintain and improve access to aged care, disability support and childcare.

“Care is another area where we’re doing a lot of work with communities through a programme called Care Together to set up and run cooperatives to be able to have access to care services, whether it’s aged care, disability or indeed childcare.”

Castlemaine demonstrates how communities can mobilise member capital to keep cherished assets in local hands, repay contributors from operating income and govern for long term community benefit.

Read the full story.