Trust in the government and coronavirus

The staggering breadth of the social and economic changes created by Australia’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic provides a stark reminder of the trust we place in our elected officials. As a nation, we have placed great faith in government decisions that have reduced our freedoms and taken away our livelihoods.

In controlling spread of the disease, Australia has done well so far. Yet, despite this, our underlying trust in government remains weak and is anything but assured.

A government app, which is designed to deliver less information from our phones than we commonly make available to private companies, has quickly become a source of angst in community. Within the blink of an eye, the latitude we have been giving government to pursue decisions in response to COVID-19 disappeared.

This fragility of public trust in government is not specific to the current crisis but is part of a longer-term trend. Falling trust in government has emerged as a defining feature of the early 21st century in mature, rich democratic nations and will be a major factor in how global responses to the pandemic play out.

Governments are not alone. Over a long period now, public confidence in key economic, social, and cultural institutions has been falling, with distrust characterising consumer attitudes to the media and business.

The surrender of basic freedoms of association and movement governments have mandated are without precedent and present a big test of trust. For Australia, success must lie in the extent to which the mandates are followed voluntarily. This in turn relies on the public being convinced that they are genuinely needed, will be time limited, and that they will make a clear contribution to a better national outcome. Widespread coercion, if needed, would be failure.

The story of how government has lost trust is complicated. It is unfair to suggest that government is solely responsible for what we see. But past failures by government in four areas help explain both why trust has fallen and what it should be doing as we navigate through the pandemic.

First, are failures of delivery. On the whole, governments in Australia operate reasonably well for their communities — at least when compared globally. But this generally sound performance has been undermined by clear failures of government as a policymaker, regulator, and as service deliverer – as has been vividly demonstrated by a spate of recent royal commissions.

These failures have been magnified by a growing gap between what people expect (or are led to believe) government can achieve and what actually happens on the ground. Over-promising by successive governments has set a bar that (with the benefit of hindsight) they have been unable to scale. The national broadband network and National Disability Insurance Scheme are two prominent examples, but there many more.

Second, are failures against basic standards of good governance. The recent sport-grants affair represents the last of a long line of such failures. An important principle of democracy is that government decisions are taken in the national interest. Elections should give governments an opportunity to pursue their own conception of the nation’s interests. But with this opportunity comes a responsibility to act within the law, observe due process, and transparently explain why government decisions are in the national interest and are not skewed to the benefit of a smaller group, individual, or political party.

Third, are failures of communication and engagement. The problem here is typically not an absence of consultation but the poor quality of it. Inconsistency and often tokenism have, for example, been a feature of government engagement with Australia’s first peoples. This has created confusion, disempowerment and the decline of trust.

Reactive messaging in pursuit of short-term government interests has too often preceded meaningful content and dialogue. This transactional approach to communication undermines the ability of government to communicate coherently with the community over time. The end result is a citizenry who questions even the most earnest and important of government communications.

Fourth, are ongoing failures to adapt fully to the modern world. Changes in the speed of information transmission have affected the balance between managing issues of the moment while positioning society for the longer-term. To bend Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman’s famous construct, (reactive) fast thinking has replaced (considered) slow thinking in government.

When issues first started emerging in relation to banking misbehaviours, age care failures, and problems in the disability system, government’s first instinct was to manage the symptoms rather than address the deeper causes. This approach leaves government lurching from decision to decision rather than setting a clear long-term path. The same reflex was evident in at least some of the early responses to COVID-19. 

A crisis is a time where we do trust our governments to do this right thing. We accept that Australian governments face an enormous challenge in guiding the nation through the current pandemic and want to support the national effort.

But as our experience with the app shows, our faith in government has clear limits and starts from a low base. And, as time goes on, the additional faith we have been showing government in response to the pandemic will be harder to retain.

No one should expect perfection from government as we navigate COVID-19. It is, as the Prime Minister has said, a time where perfection is the enemy of the good.

But it is also important that government learns from the past. The path to building trust lies in: setting achievable expectations and delivering on them; adhering to the basic standards of governance; explaining clearly, honestly and holistically; and acting and communicating with a long-term view in mind, despite the noise and speed of the moment.

Doing these things will, in turn, help all of us get through the current crisis and be stronger on the other side.

Sean Innis is Director of the Public Policy and Societal Impact Hub at The Australian National University.

Ryan Young is Director of the Futures Hub at the National Security College at The Australian National University.

This article originally appeared in the Canberra Times on 23 April 2020