In short:
Wyndham City Council now spends almost $206 million a year on staff, employing close to 1,640 people across its operations. The scale of the workforce is driving renewed discussion about efficiency and accountability.
Wages Account For Bulk of Expenses
Wyndham City Council now employs close to 1,640 full-time equivalent staff, a scale that is increasingly drawing scrutiny as residents question whether the organisation has grown beyond what is required to deliver core local government services.
In the 2025–26 financial year, Wyndham City Council is spending just under $206 million on staffing, making wages and employee costs its single largest expense.
The bulk of that workforce, and the overwhelming share of salary expenditure, sits within five directorates: the CEO’s Office, Corporate Services, Planning and Liveability, City Life and City Operations.
As Wyndham’s population has surged, Council’s internal structure has expanded alongside it, pushing well beyond the traditional roads, rates and rubbish model residents historically associate with local government.
City Life is the largest directorate by a considerable margin, employing more than 530 staff and accounting for over $55 million in wages.
The department oversees libraries, early years services, aged care, community programs and social services.
Planning and Liveability follows, with more than 330 staff and around $35.6 million in wage costs, covering statutory planning, compliance, environmental programs and strategic policy.
Corporate Services employs close to 280 staff at a cost of $32.4 million, delivering governance, finance, information technology, people and culture, legal and administrative support.
City Operations, responsible for roads, rubbish collection, parks, drainage and fleet services, employs about 360 staff and costs $35.7 million. The CEO’s Office, while much smaller, still adds roughly $2.75 million in staffing costs.
Data Inconsistent With Gender Equality Plan
As the organisation has expanded, so too has the internal policy and reporting framework that governs it.
This is most evident in the recently expired Gender Equality Action Plan 2021–25, which Wyndham City Council was required to adopt under the Victorian Gender Equality Act 2020.
The framework was mandated by state legislation, obliging Council to resource, implement and report against a gender equality model, regardless of local workforce composition or whether the underlying assumptions were supported by evidence.
Council has said it supports the intent of the plan and is proud of its contribution, while also emphasising that compliance with the framework was compulsory.
The plan itself is built around the concept of intersectionality, applying a gender-centred lens across recruitment, leadership, training and internal policy development.
Gender is framed as the primary driver of inequality, with other characteristics treated as compounding disadvantages.
However, Council’s own workforce and wage data challenges that framing. Women are not underrepresented within the organisation.
Across most of Council’s largest and most labour-intensive departments, women dominate both staff numbers and wage distribution.
In City Life, women receive about 86 per cent of all wages paid. In Planning and Liveability, women receive the majority share of wages, as they do in Corporate Services, where close to two-thirds of total pay goes to female staff.
Even within the CEO’s Office, women receive a slightly higher share of wages than men. City Operations is the exception, with men receiving around three-quarters of wages paid, reflecting the physical and technical nature of operational roles rather than systemic disadvantage elsewhere in the organisation.
Numbers Grow, Priorities Questioned
Taken as a whole, women receive more of Wyndham City Council’s total wage bill than men because they make up the majority of staff in the largest departments.
The data does not show women experiencing worse financial outcomes, nor does it support the claim that they are structurally disadvantaged within Council’s workforce.
The Gender Equality Action Plan itself acknowledges limits in Council’s ability to collect and disaggregate workforce data across many of the categories central to its framework.
Despite that limitation, intersectionality is applied consistently throughout the document, without challenge, alternative explanations or competing interpretations of outcomes.
Gender is treated as an established source of inequality rather than a proposition to be tested against evidence.
With the plan now expired, attention is turning to what comes next. As staffing numbers continue to rise, wage costs grow and pressure on rates increases, residents are increasingly questioning whether Council’s expanding internal frameworks are aligned with community expectations and service delivery priorities.
The discussion now centres on whether future gender equality plans will better balance theory with evidence, broaden consultation, and ensure accountability keeps pace with compliance.
It also raises questions about whether an intersectional lens has practical weaknesses in organisations where women are not experiencing worse outcomes, and where workforce data shows they already dominate much of Council’s internal structure.
As local government responsibilities continue to expand, the challenge for Wyndham City Council will be demonstrating that growth in staff, policy and reporting delivers tangible value, rather than distancing the organisation further from the core services residents rely on every day.
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