Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions in Australia

62% of Australians believe government institutions would be ready to protect people's lives in an emergency, compared to 53% on average across the OECD.

Despite a comprehensive disaster response framework, there is evidence of significant co-ordination and communication challenges across government levels, potentially creating confusion for citizens seeking resources in the aftermath of a large-scale emergency.

Resilience efforts have largely been focused on natural disasters, but this scope has limited the integration of resilience concepts into broader national security discussions.

• Promoting a more citizen-centric and holistic approach to resilience:

  • Examine how to co-ordinate across government levels to provide more citizen-focused disaster responses, and help individuals better navigate the support and services available to them.

  • Enhance efforts to overcome silos to develop a whole-of-government approach to managing emerging critical risks.

Australians' perceptions of the ability of institutions to tackle long-term challenges are significantly higher than across the OECD.

43% of Australians believe that the Australian Public Service looks out for society's long-term interests, and 47% think the government adequately balances current and future generations' interests.

Australia has developed a robust evidence base for long-term policy planning. However, large-scale deliberative initiatives focusing on long-term issues are not yet common or institutionalised in Australia.

• Enhancing confidence in the government’s ability to protect long-term interests fairly and effectively:

  • Continue to invest in anticipatory and strategic foresight exercises to overcome the poverty of information about longer-term outcomes.

  • Strengthen the institutional framework to mitigate the fragility of long-term commitments in democracies, notably through the APS Stewardship function.

  • Balance this technocratic approach with enhanced mechanisms for citizen participation on long-term issues to promote buy-in.

Over half of the Australian population (52%) feel confident the government would use the best available evidence when designing policies, over 10 percentage points above the OECD average (41%).

About two-thirds of ruling party voters believe the government uses the best evidence, compared to 40% of opposition voters.

Since 2019, Australia has made significant progress in enhancing evidence-based policymaking, though the implementation and use of evidence varies across different policy areas.

• Further embedding high-quality research in decision-making processes:

  • Envisage assessing the country’s evidence-informed policymaking to strengthen the use of evidence more equally across different commonwealth entities.

In Australia, satisfaction levels exceed OECD averages across key services, with education at 71% (up from 63% in 2021), healthcare at 64%, and administrative services at 68%. Compared to other OECD countries, Australia's performance in administrative services satisfaction is more modest, ranking 14th out of 30 countries.

Workforce shortages are affecting all three service areas in Australia.

In Australia, many key services involve complex co-ordination arrangements among levels of government, which at times can hinder the ability to deliver or enact change.

• Improving the user experience of government services to maintain high satisfaction with essential services:

  • Continue to address workforce shortages in key domains, notably teaching staff and health professional occupations, and frontline staff working for Services Australia.

  • Mitigate the effects of intergovernmental co-ordination failures on the provision of dependable essential services, notably by better connecting government services across agency and jurisdictional boundaries.

Although levels of satisfaction with essential services are high in Australia, the OECD Trust Survey reveals notable differences in satisfaction with Australian public services across socio-economic and demographic groups.

Men, individuals with higher levels of education, and those without financial concerns consistently reported higher satisfaction levels with administrative services and healthcare. The education system showed less variation, with financial concerns being the only factor significantly affecting satisfaction levels.

Data on satisfaction with services among Indigenous Australians is scarce, presenting challenges in assessing their experiences with public services and potential impact on trust levels.

While Australian Commonwealth institutions have formal guidelines for citizen and stakeholder engagement and regularly interact with various actors in policy design, they primarily engage with other government departments and organised groups rather than citizens or users directly.

Australians show above-average confidence in their government's responsiveness, with 46% believing public complaints lead to service improvements and 45% confident that majority opposition can change policies. However, evidence suggests many are unaware they can provide feedback, and those who do are not always satisfied with the outcome.

Gaps in satisfaction and outcomes between Indigenous and non-indigenous citizens tend to require the use of additional levers, as they typically result from a different set of governance failures.

• Continue investing in a human-centred approach to public service, including through tailoring policies, programmes, and services to the diverse needs of the population:

  • Work towards developing measures of service satisfaction that are representative of different population groups, including Indigenous Australians.

  • Further institutionalise citizen engagement upstream during the problem identification and design phases of the policy cycle.

  • Develop a civil society organisation strategy to enhance civil society capacity and improve the quality of engagement:

  • Raise greater awareness among the public about how they can provide feedback and potentially gather additional data through the Survey of Trust in Australian Public Services as to what type of outcome people would typically seek when submitting feedback or a complaint.

  • In line with the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, move towards shared decision-making and enhanced capacity for community-controlled organisation to improve service responsiveness and policy outcomes for Indigenous Australians.

The OECD Trust Survey found that 48% of Australians believe public institutions would adopt innovative ideas to improve services, ranking Australia third in this aspect.

The Australian government has been actively and successfully pursuing digital transformation in the public sector to drive innovation and improve access to government services.

The Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) is attempting to address the digital skills gap in APS through a mix of learning opportunities. These initiatives, in particular formal training opportunities, primarily focus on digital professionals.

Currently, 20% of recent users of an administrative service in Australia report being dissatisfied with the ability to access administrative services through their preferred channel, on par with the OECD average of 21%.

The most recent OECD Open, Useful, Reusable Data Index (OURData) ranked Australia 28th out of 36 OECD countries on data openness.

• Taking advantage of the digital transformation:

  • Expand training opportunities to target civil servants in non-digital roles more broadly.

  • Address shortcomings with regards to the existing legal and institutional framework for data interoperability and political incentives for data sharing, including with ACCOs.

There is evidence of a significant digital gap in Australia, particularly affecting Indigenous people, older adults, and those with lower education levels.

56% of Australians feel confident a government institution would only use their personal data for legitimate reasons. While this is above the OECD average of 52%, Australia ranks 10th out of the 30 surveyed countries.

• Balancing digital transformation with ethical and equity considerations:

  • Ensure efforts to promote digital transformation do not compound existing inequalities, notably for Indigenous Australians. Access to services through one’s preferred channel should remain a priority.

  • Continue initiatives to strengthen privacy and security frameworks, as set out in the Data and Digital Government Strategy and explore ways for citizens to gain a comprehensive understanding of the information the government possesses about them or their community and how this data is used.

A relatively large majority of Australians (70%) believe they can easily access information about administrative processes.

In contrast, a much smaller share of people in Australia (46%) believe the government clearly informs them about the impacts that reforms can have on their lives.

Only around four in ten Australians reported that information and statistics provided by government are easy to find (42%) and understand (40%).

The federal administration in Australia routinely only communicate in English. This can make it difficult for a considerable share of the population to access public information.

• Promoting a culture of proactive disclosure of public information and clearly communicating with the citizens public institutions serve:

  • when information is high-stakes or when the target audience is linguistically diverse, provide information in languages other than English;

  • use plain and clear language;

  • share messages tailored to communities’ needs and target different groups of audiences through identified relevant channels.

Only 41% of Australians reported high and moderately high trust in news media.

People's trust in government was found to be related to their information and news consumption habits, with trust being higher in particular among newspaper readers. Trust is particularly low among those who do not follow politics or current affairs.

Australia is among the leader countries in efforts to protect people from mis- and disinformation, and this is a collaborative objective involving not only public institutions but also other interested parties.

• Encouraging a healthy, diverse, and independent media environment enhancing opportunities for public scrutiny and informed decision making and investing in evidence-informed approaches to media literacy.

Almost half of Australians (46%) feel able to participate in politics and believe that people like them have a say in what the government does, compared to 40% and 30%, respectively, on average, across OECD countries.

Challenges in terms of political voice seem to be higher for women, older people, those with lower levels of education or who are financially concerned.

When analysing reported ways of engagement, almost two in ten Australians (17%) reported not participating in any form of political activity and, with the exception of electoral participation, Australians participate less than their OECD peers in all forms of participation.

Lower levels of Australians’ political participation are accompanied by an increasing fragmentation of the party system and lower levels of reported partisanship.

Citizens in Australia are unable to propose legislation, and public institutions encourage a top-down approach to participation, where people can only react or contribute to what is proposed by the government. There are very few examples of more regular engagement between people and government officials, and even fewer opportunities for participatory or deliberative democracy.

• Enhancing and creating more opportunities for political engagement to align with Australians’ perceptions of their ability to participate in and influence politics, and their appetite for direct democracy:

  • Make guidance and self-assessment tools on partnership and engagement a requirement for any new national or state policy.

  • States that do not have such bodies could explore the possibility of incorporating advisory bodies representing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples into their parliaments.

  • Centralise “Have your say” spaces hosted by different agencies into a single platform, facilitating access and allowing registration and monitoring of processes.

  • Put in place institutional channels that allow people to interact with policymakers more often, and test and open policy areas to allow citizens’ initiatives or representative deliberative experiences.

  • Boost collective engagement by promoting national dialogues and strengthening political parties through more democratic decision-making and candidate selection procedures.

Perceptions of public integrity in Australia are slightly above the OECD average, except for those concerning “policy capture”. Yet, they represent the set of public governance measures in which Australia fares worse, and which have improved least compared to the results of the 2021 OECD Trust Survey.

Australia has multiple public integrity frameworks, policies and agencies setting standards of conduct and behaviour, controls, and safeguards against integrity risks.

Despite efforts, institutional challenges remain, including those related to co-ordination in a federal country.

• Ensuring and strengthening co-operation on integrity issues by investing in data collection and governance, both horizontally among federal integrity agencies, and vertically with the States/Territories.

Challenges remain concerning the environment of public officials’ psychological safety.

• Maintaining a safe work environment in public administration:

  • Determine how to address psychological health and safety.

  • Set and monitor standards that allow for identifying challenges.

44% of Australians doubt that a policymaker would refuse an offer of a well-paid job in the private sector in exchange for a political favour, slightly below the average across OECD countries (49%).

Australia has regulations establishing cooling-off periods for Ministers and members of cabinet, but they do not cover members of legislative bodies or lobbyists.

• Ensuring all public institutions develop and implement policies on post-employment conflict of interest.

Only 41% of Australians believe that Australian Government institutions act according to the best interest of society and just a quarter (25%) of people in Australia find it likely that the government would refuse a corporation’s demand that would benefit its industry but could be harmful to society as a whole.

This is below the average across OECD countries (30%) and represents the only public governance perception indicator in which Australia does not outperform the OECD.

Australia does not have in place regulations to ban contributions from foreign states or enterprises, nor ceilings to electoral campaign expenses, nor thresholds for personal contributions to candidates’ campaigns

• Supporting the legislative branch in the extension of current regulations on lobbying, stipulating that transparency requirements cover the legislative and judiciary branches, and other actors than consultant lobbyists, such as think tanks, companies or trade associations.

• Expanding disclosure requirements to private contributions regardless of amounts, banning donations from government contractors and requesting that disclosure is made in real-time.

A majority of Australians (55%) perceive that public officials will treat people equally regardless of their income level, gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity or country of origin, compared to 45%, on average, across the OECD.

An even larger share of respondents (64%) believe their applications for government benefits or services would be treated fairly, 12 percentage points above the OECD average (52%).

Women and Australians who reported lower education levels or financial concerns have lower perceptions of fairness.

• Policies aimed at mitigating perceived socioeconomic vulnerabilities and inequalities could be crucial in closing trust gaps among population groups.

Less than half of Australians (48%) believe that it is likely that the federal parliament adequately balances the needs of different regions and groups in society, while one-third of the population (30%) think it is unlikely.

• Promote initiatives to keep on promoting and ensuring diverse representation, both in public sector and politics.

• Collecting and showcasing data disaggregated and according to relevance criteria that can be useful for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, which may help to better target policies, and tackle inequalities and vulnerabilities.