Beyond the Trust Crisis: The Futures of Trust in the Australian Government

Nichola Cooper

doi:10.25907/01000

Australia is widely described as being amid an institutional “trust crisis.” The Edelman Trust Barometer (a public relations firm) has repeatedly identified public trust in the Australian government as being in a state of “turmoil” (Edelman, 2018, p. 7), further asserting that no national institution is currently perceived as both competent and ethical (Edelman, 2023b). These findings invite a deeper epistemological and empirical interrogation: Is Australia truly experiencing a crisis of trust, and if so, what are the ontological, social, and political implications of this condition? What imaginaries emerge when one envisions the “end of trust”? This thesis is animated by a central question—does the purported trust crisis signal an enduring deterioration of trust within the Australian polity, and if so, what trajectories might this deterioration follow? The potentially damaging narrative purported by this PR company framing their trust data in this manner and the impacts of declining trust are gradually beginning to be challenged and considered (Butzlaff & Messinger-Zimmer, 2019), however understanding trust reporting is confusing for the layperson to understand. There are many trust constructs, definitions and theories that affect how to interpret trust findings, that are often not specified in public reporting. This study examines the nuances of trust theory to understand the impacts of declining trust for society and the government. Australia presently stands at a confluence of environmental, social, and generational transformations that are reshaping the very architecture of its civic and institutional life. Westenberg (2025) characterises the current period as a “decade of discontent,” marked by an erosion of the attainability of traditional life milestones—career stability, family formation, and homeownership—against a backdrop of “broader societal fractures” (para. 3). The apparent expansion of elite wealth has exacerbated intergenerational inequality, producing a widening disjunction between those who continue to accumulate economic capital and those for whom the symbolic achievements of prior generations have become increasingly inaccessible. Indeed, 2024 research suggests that economic inequality reduces political trust since the public recognises inequality as a failure of the political system in Western democracies (Shuai Jin & Tianguang, 2024). Generations Z and Alpha are thus coming of age within an Australia that bears little resemblance to the socioeconomic landscape of their predecessors. Projections suggest that by 2100, the youngest members of Generation Z will be 88 years old, having spent much of their lives in conditions of employment precarity and prolonged rental tenure (Underhill, 2024; Australian Institute for Housing and Management [AIHM], 2024). For this generation, homeownership will have receded from attainable aspiration to distant memory, observed only through the experiences of their parents. Generation Alpha, the youngest of whom will be 76 in 2100, will inhabit a reality in which homeownership is not merely unattainable but structurally foreclosed (Filby, 2024, para. 6). Their socialisation will occur in an environment where stable employment is uncertain, educational attainment no longer guarantees occupational security, and asset accumulation is improbable (ARUP, 2025). Scenarios by ARUP (2025) characterise these themes as informing a future defined as ‘Mass Vulnerabilities’. Consequently, this cohort may not express declining trust in government because, for many, such trust may never have been established. Rather than reflecting erosion, political distrust may be understood as an inherited or ambient condition—an absence of expectation rather than a loss of faith. The contemporary “trust crisis” discourse is largely framed within political science paradigms—typically manifesting as a lament over distrust in politicians—or through institutional trust indices, such as those produced by Edelman, which diagnose trust as being in “turmoil.” However, such approaches tend to conceptualise trust as a property of institutions—faceless bureaucratic systems, abstract collectives, or anonymised agencies—rather than as a relational or subjective construct experienced at the individual level. Furthermore, empirical analyses of longitudinal individual trust data remain conspicuously absent from the Australian context. Consequently, despite the pervasiveness of the “trust crisis” narrative, there exists no definitive longitudinal evidence elucidating whether Australians’ institutional trust is substantively declining, or if the notion of crisis is itself a media and methodological artefact. Trust is a notoriously complex phenomenon to operationalise and measure, and its representation in public discourse is often reductive. Media reportage frequently distorts or exaggerates empirical findings to advance predetermined agendas or moral panics. A key objective of this thesis, therefore, is to interrogate the theoretical architecture of trust itself, situating the “crisis” narrative within broader epistemological, cultural, and methodological contexts. The research identifies a critical paucity of reliable, longitudinal trust data in Australia, rendering it untenable to assert conclusively that individuals are losing trust in government. While political science indicators suggest a downward trend in governmental trust and confidence, this does not necessarily connote a corresponding deterioration in interpersonal or social trust generally. Indeed, emergent data indicate that social trust—trust among individuals—has been increasing, a paradox that invites further theoretical scrutiny. This thesis posits that there may be an inverse relationship between social and political trust, potentially reflective of Australia’s broader transitional condition, conceptualised here through the analytical lens of postnormal theory (Sardar, 2010, 2010a, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2019a, n.d.). Employing a futures studies methodology, this research integrates horizon scanning to identify the structural and contextual drivers shaping Australians’ trust and confidence in government and to extrapolate their potential implications for the nation’s political futures. Despite the acknowledged centrality of trust to all human and systemic interactions (Kaplan, Kessler, & Hancock, 2020), there exists no comprehensive Australian scholarship addressing the prospective consequences of declining political trust—or, more precisely, declining confidence—in government institutions. Accordingly, the central research question guiding this inquiry is: What are the possible futures of trust in the Australian government? This investigation commences by interrogating the conceptual and empirical foundations of the alleged “crisis,” recognising that the language of crisis pervades numerous domains of Australian public life. Drawing on postnormal theory (Sardar, 2010, 2010a, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2019a, n.d.), the emerging literature on “polycrisis” (Homer-Dixon, 2023), and the sociological frameworks of Rees-Mogg and Davidson (2019) and Giddens (1990, 1991), this work situates the phenomenon of trust within a broader risk society paradigm. It argues that increasing uncertainty across the core domains of individual security—housing, employment, financial stability, and career trajectories—has intensified public anxiety and catalysed a collective orientation toward security-seeking behaviours (Cadiot Agency, 2024). As Westenberg (2025, para. 7) observes, there exists a “tear in the fabric of societies” that has “ignited a simmering sense of injustice and resentment” symptomatic of deeper systemic volatility. Drawing upon data from the World Values Survey (WVS) and a comprehensive environmental scan, this thesis delineates the implications of these transformations for governance, legitimacy, and democratic resilience. It finds that Australians are demonstrating declining confidence in the state’s capacity to navigate complex, interdependent, and rapidly evolving environments (Rees-Mogg & Davidson, 1997; Giddens, 1991; Sardar, n.d.; Sardar, 2014). This erosion of confidence appears to arise from a perceptual disjuncture between societal and environmental volatility and the government’s perceived ability to anticipate, plan for, and effectively respond to emergent challenges. The consequence is a deepening public perception of living within an increasingly risky and unpredictable world. Through a scenario-based analysis spanning a 75-year time horizon (outlined in Chapter 5), this research constructs post-democratic futures characterised by governmental instability, systemic uncertainty, and heightened perceptions of risk. These scenarios envision profound transformations in the social order (Westenberg, 2025; Rees-Mogg & Davidson, 1997; Cadiot Agency, 2024), potentially unfolding over protracted periods of tension and transition. Within such contexts, civic disillusionment may incubate new modalities of collective action, with protest movements evolving into more radicalised or extremist forms, and consequent disruptions to established governance architectures (Cadiot Agency, 2024). The thesis concludes with a synthesis of implications for policy and governance, presented in Chapter 6, following the structural overview provided in the Thesis Roadmap

Beyond the Trust Crisis: The Futures of Trust in the Australian Government

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