In recent years, Australia’s rural communities are facing increasing difficulties, including deteriorating terms of trade, droughts, low fertility issues, and reduced federal and state government support. Although not unique to Australia, these problems seem to be getting worse due to the large inland areas and severe isolation between communities. In the past few years, the federal government and state governments have tried to settle the issue through the ‘de facto dual track rural development strategy’ including agricultural policies and social welfare measures. However, perhaps because of the decline in the hegemony of agriculture in contemporary rural areas, people have increasingly realized that the task of developing rural Australia is not just to solve agricultural issues. Instead, Australia’s current rural development strategy has transformed its focus on the concept of self-help and bottom-up community development. It aims to “empower” individuals to protect themselves from the compulsory structure of government intervention. From the perspective of empowerment, the author discusses the Queensland government and experts’ discourses on rural community development and concludes that these strategies indicate advanced liberalism that seeks to govern through the community.

In this context, empowerment is defined as a process that improves the individual’s entrepreneur qualities to take action on his own, regardless of any structural restrictions that limit movement. The key lies in cultivating the individual’s inherent ability and internalizing the community culture. Those community development practitioners who adopt this view are only supporting the existed belief that globalization is a natural and inevitable phenomenon. And the empowerment is more like a government technology which changes individual attitudes and behaviours under empowering speech in a manner consistent with government control.

The article shows that Australia’s governance approach is roughly the same as that of the United Kingdom and Europe. People in the rural area has been empowered with the right to solve their own problems, and the current structural adjustment model of rural community development needs autonomy. However, unlike the United Kingdom, Australia’s rural development still lacks any continuous and comprehensive policy.

For those who advocate the development of rural autonomous action, the fundamental strength of rural development lies in its empowering potential. The starting point for community development is that individuals begin to realize the connection between them and their potential community. A strong and cohesive neighbourhood, whose members must recognize their common identity and common destiny, and be willing to work for the common good of all, is regarded as the key to the revival of rural Australia. Researchers often refer to community development as the first step in economic growth, and it is also the key to the bottom-up sustainable development approach that xis strongly advocated nowadays.