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The trust deficit: Australia 2012

By Mal Fletcher - posted Tuesday, 5 June 2012


Trust in public leadership is fragile if a culture of mistrust sets in.

‘If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow-citizens,’ wrote Abraham Lincoln, ‘you can never regain their respect and esteem.’

One of the primary responsibilities of a leader in any organisation, or in any sector of society, is the creation of a culture of confidence.

Good leaders are cultural architects. We look to them, through their example and their policies, to create a certain kind of environment, a milieu in which we feel we have the courage to innovate, invest and take risks in order to produce growth.

This is especially true - and particularly important - when it comes to national leaders and even more so in a time of fiscal uncertainty.

The key currency in a capitalist system is public confidence, based on trust. This is the currency that potentially suffers most during a period of economic tightening.

By world standards, Australia is still in relatively good shape.

The OECD revealed recently that it expects Australia's economy to grow again this year and into 2013. This is good news compared with their prognosis for, say, Europe.

While this growth is be underpinned by an ongoing mining investment boom, however, a high-value dollar combined with government cost-cutting, a slump in consumer spending and a depressed housing market will slow other parts of the domestic economy.

Australia has thus far escaped the worst effects of the near-global financial crisis, but its people are now starting to feel the pinch a little more.

The impact of even a slight economic slowdown is exacerbated when leaders of national institutions operate under an ethical or legal cloud.

Economic confidence is a fragile thing and once shaken it can take years to re-establish. Yet trust in public leadership is even more fragile and if a general culture of mistrust sets in, the damage can be long-lasting – economically and socially.

Trust is viral, as is the lack of it. A culture of trust in leadership encourages positive risk-taking and the investment of people’s money and talent. A culture of suspicion is anathema to innovation and therefore stifles economic progress.

As an Australian living in London and working globally, I can say that even from a distance the current tenor of Australian political life inspires very little in the way of confidence.

In a near-hung federal parliament, facing an uncertain economic outlook, people expect political leaders to demonstrate a higher than normal level of cooperation. Yet Australia’s political classes are struggling to overcome a growing perception that they suffer from a severe integrity deficit.

The political tone seems totally self-serving and driven not by big-picture issues but by a desire to score political points. It has reinforced a culture of suspicion in the broader public mind.

The danger is that this will produce a trickle-down effect, so that people lose confidence in leadership generally.

When this happens, leaders across a wider range of social sectors – from business, to civic and community organisations – find it increasingly difficult to create an environment in which people feel courageous enough to spend and invest.

This has been the experience in Britain. Over the past two years, the UK has undergone a house-cleaning operation the like of which it hasn’t seen in a generation.

In the wake of various scandals and inquiries, almost every major institution, from the Parliament, to the courts, the police service, the news media and the business sector – particularly the banks – was held up to unprecedented scrutiny.

Throughout this period, British society has experienced a maelstrom of public unease and a growing distrust of institutionsm which have traditionally provided the foundations for a stable social order.

Even now, public trust is not yet fully restored. The Leveson inquiry into press and media practices continues to raise new and disturbing questions about ethical standards at the top levels of public leadership.

Once lost, trust is hard to regain. Recent council elections saw the national coalition parties routed in almost all key locations, barring London and Britain’s second dip into recession is, at least in part, another hangover symptom of this lingering trust deficit.

The Australian context is different, both economically and politically, but the nation risks heading in a similar direction.

Not long ago, The Times newspaper featured a graph it said showed the incidence of certain words appearing in its articles from 1985 to the present.

Predictably, the word ‘terrorism’ showed a sharp incline towards the end of 2011. What caught my eye, though, was the line representing the word ‘sorry’ as spoken in the public square. It showed a steady increase from the mid-1980s onwards.

As politics have become more personality-driven, people have come to expect a greater level of personal accountability, honesty and transparency from their political leaders.

We require that they set a personal and professional tone that inspires trust, not least because this gives us the courage to fulfil our own potential and produce growth for the wider community.

Abraham Lincoln also mused that: ‘Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.’

In the present day, where shadows abound in political life, we are all of us looking for the real thing.

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About the Author

Mal Fletcher is a media social futurist and commentator, keynote speaker, author, business leadership consultant and broadcaster currently based in London. He holds joint Australian and British citizenship.

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Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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