Restricting political analysis to issues surrounding property and development services would ignore people in whose interests human as well as, or rather than, property services may lie. In Cowra, such people include women and Aborigines, as they may potentially be served by local government, and as their interests may occasionally be pursued in the local political arena. Serving such interests implies an element of redistribution of local resources along a social dimension. Moves to broaden local government's functions into human services would also necessitate action to deviate from tradition and challenge property interests at the same time. Such challenge would have to, implicitly if not explicitly, raise the functions of local government as an issue. People expressing non-property interests may face a substantial task in raising an issue, when the ‘people's corporation’ sees its corporate interest best served by staying clear of non-traditional functions. Non-decision, within the property services tradition, is a decision to confine services to the property kind.

Human services provide contrast with property services but do not imply an economic redistribution role. Local government is unlikely to take on income or wealth redistributional objectives on its own as long as its revenue is derived from rates, for, as Jones (1977) explained, a council which rated the rich so heavily as to enable significant redistribution to the poor would fear encouraging the rich to move elsewhere.