Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to talk today about trust and how to build it, particularly trust in government. The ANU Australian Election Study recently found that only one in three Australians believe that people in government can be trusted to do the right thing. That is damning for all of us and something we desperately need to address. Also we're increasingly seeing a majority of Australians having a moderate or high grievance against government, business or the rich. And 64 per cent of Australians worry that government leaders purposely mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations. Finally, only 17 per cent believe that the next generation will be better off.

We in this building should be worried about all these statistics. We do have a problem. The Prime Minister, early in his term, said that he did want to improve trust in government. He said, 'I don't expect to make Australians fall in love with question time, but I do want more people to have greater faith in the integrity of our parliament and its representatives.' That's a laudable aim, but my concern is that the government, particularly the Prime Minister, is not taking the steps required to build the trust that we need in institutions.

I could use the next eight minutes and a half to have a go at the Prime Minister. But what I'm trying to do, and more interested in doing first, is outlining where I believe that trust can be built—how we can build back. We can complain about the government of the day, or we can actually try to lead by showing where we should develop these areas. There are five key areas that I believe we must work on to increase trust in our government and our institutions. These are around (1) transparency, (2) accountability, (3) strengthening our institutions, (4) delivering what we said we would and, finally, (5) the community and how they can be put back in the heart of government.

Let me start with transparency. One of the things that surprised me, coming into parliament, was that the Public Service, or the work they do in the departments, was not accessible to me as a member of the House of Representatives. I'd thought that I would be able to talk to departmental people and see all the reports they write for the government. But no, because the Public Service is there to serve the government, and the government chooses what it releases and what it doesn't. Particularly, it makes that choice through things like the FOI restrictions that are currently placed on the release of documents. So my question is: how can we build transparency so that, as a member of parliament and, frankly, as a citizen you have access to what is going on in government? You can understand what recommendations are being made and what opportunities are being considered. People say that sunshine is the best disinfectant. I believe strongly that if you can increase transparency you can increase trust in government.

There are things that the government and parts of this country do already—things like releasing ministerial diaries so that people don't feel that perhaps government are meeting with lobbyists more than they're meeting with citizens. I was speaking to a former leader in one of the states of this country and they said to me that actually releasing ministerial diaries made them aware of how much lobbying was going on by a particular group on a particular issue. We could make sure there's much more transparency about who's sponsoring lobbyists. Those are some of the things that could be really important.

But I think it really goes to an attitudinal shift in transparency, perhaps like Audrey Tang in Taiwan, who I will quote a number of times in this debate. In Taiwan they have really pushed for radical transparency. I believe I'd be very excited to have a government where so much of what government does is released—where it's released by the rule rather than the exception. Instead, what we have in this government at the moment is that FOI requests disclosed in full have plummeted from 59 per cent in 2011 to just 21 per cent in 2023 and 2024, and refusals have doubled. First, change the attitude, change the FOI rules, change the laws around ministerial diaries and lobbyists, and go for radical transparency to build trust with the Australian people.

Second is accountability. One of the things that I have said from the very start is: answer people's questions. That's what people expect from you. During question time, we spend over an hour every single day that parliament sits feeling like we are watching the government—in the main, not in all situations—skirt around questions through the cover of relevance, even though they're not answering a question, which sometimes is as simple as yes or no. If you want to build accountability, if you want to build trust then start by answering the questions and take them further.

Be accountable to the weaknesses and the strengths of the things that you have brought in and recommended. Make sure that your projects are assessed. Before policies are put forward, give some KPIs, give some costings and then, three years later or however long it takes, come back, assess the project and the policy against its KPIs and its costings. That's what you do in business. That's about building accountability for the outcomes that you said you're going to achieve. If government is clear on what it's going to achieve and not afraid of assessing whether or not it has actually achieved that in a policy, then we will have better public debate. And frankly, I believe we will have better policies. Right now, we can't even get this government to be accountable to the things that it sets up. When there are big issues, sometimes people ask for reports by committee inquiries. The government has commissioned tens of these committee inquiries. It has responded so far to four committee inquiries within six months, which is what it's meant to do. It has 55 reports that are outstanding beyond the six-month mark. That is where the government could build trust—by building accountability.

Third is institutions, and that is not only about building the strength of our parliament and ensuring competition in our parliament but also about making sure that people have trust in other institutions such as our courts and the Public Service. For a time, particularly when I was growing up, public servants were seen as providing frank and fearless advice. They contradicted ministers publicly about some of their interpretations or their work. They were brave because they were there to represent the public. Now public servants have become more the servants of the government as opposed to the servants of the people. How could you increase the transparency and openness of public servants to criticise, to share the information that they're putting forward to government? Again, you would build trust. If you can handle a criticism, you build trust. Australians really recognise this.

In terms of competition in the parliament, make sure you have the rules that allow competition. Instead, last year the Labor government with the coalition passed rules to make it harder for Independents and minor parties to be successful in elections. That doesn't build trust; take those back. Access to institutions, the courts and those other institutions, should be free and fast. Only 42 per cent of Administrative Review Tribunal cases are resolved within 12 months. That's not a strength of institution, that is not justice delivered and that doesn't build trust. Deal with that.

Fourth is delivering, because, ultimately, people trust people who do what they say they're going to do, and that applies to governments as well. We haven't seen quality or accountability from governments in the delivery of better outcomes for people. Make sure that people feel like the services that they're paying for are actually delivering better results; that will ultimately build trust.

Finally, I'm going to talk about community. Audrey Tang, a person who has really driven enormous change in trust in Taiwan, said:

We recovered from the trust crisis not by asking people to trust the government, but by encouraging public services to trust the people.

And that comes down to community. Who are you asking? Who are you engaging? How is government listening and responding to the concerns of the community? Are there different and exciting ways that people around the world are doing this? Citizens' assemblies—a recent poll found that actually almost 50 per cent of Australians are open to citizens' assemblies to deal with possibly difficult issues. Maybe, at a certain level, if you have enough people—in some countries, if you have enough people to sign a petition, the government has to respond. That is, I think, a way that government can be accountable. When you do reviews and these parliamentary inquiries, how do we get everyday people, not just people with vested interests, to engage in these things? There are innovative ways to do this online. We have never actually had a world where it would be easier for us to engage the community and citizens in these things.

This really comes back to the final point: trust matters. The strength of the Australian democracy, of our economy, of our institutions, depends on trust. It is eroding, and there are ways that we can deal with it. It is about transparency, accountability, institutions, delivery and community, and it is time this government took those properly into account.

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