Trust in government is earned in the everyday, not in the messaging

This opinion article, by ANZSOG Dean and CEO Caron Beaton-Wells, first appeared in The Mandarin 

Public trust is not a communications problem to be solved after confidence has been lost. It is built, or depleted, through the daily work of government. That matters most when governments need more than an electoral mandate to make difficult changes. 

Earlier this year, Katherine and surrounding communities experienced their worst flooding in decades. Hundreds of Northern Territory public servants were redeployed into the emergency response, some while their own homes and families were under threat. 

They managed logistics and food supplies, established shelters, moved patients and kept financial assistance flowing. The Katherine hospital was evacuated while continuing to serve as a regional health centre. 

This is what trust in government looks like when it becomes tangible. When people are vulnerable, they need to know public institutions will be capable and present. 

But that confidence was not created during the flood. It rested on work done much earlier: plans tested, people trained, logistics rehearsed and relationships built. Most of that work is invisible when it succeeds. Yet it is what allows government to show up when it matters. 

The lesson extends well beyond emergencies. People rarely experience government as an abstract institution. They experience a website that helps or frustrates them, a letter that makes sense or leaves them anxious, a decision that feels fair or inexplicable, and a person who listens and follows through, or does not. 

These encounters accumulate. They are where trust is built or lost, and where public servants create the conditions that give governments room to make difficult choices. 

Authority is given. Trust is earned. 

An election gives a government authority and, sometimes, a clear mandate for reform. It does not, by itself, confer trust. 

Trust grows from people’s accumulated experience of whether government is capable, fair, responsive and true to its word. Better messaging cannot compensate for a service that does not work, a commitment that is not honoured or a consultation process in which the important decisions have already been made. 

That does not make communication unimportant. Governments build trust when they explain decisions honestly, use language people can understand and maintain contact over time. But communication can only support what people experience. 

This distinction matters because governments across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand are grappling with reforms that require people to accept real disruption, cost or compromise. Housing, health and aged care, the energy transition and productivity all involve difficult choices, and the benefits are rarely distributed evenly or immediately. 

The formal authority conferred by an election outcome may allow governments to make those choices. Sustaining reform requires something more: sufficient public acceptance for it to endure through controversy, implementation problems and changes of government. This is, in effect, a social licence and it rests heavily on the trust government has accumulated before asking the community to accept change. 

Trust is built with people, not for them 

Research by ANZSOG and the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy examined how governments can build and sustain social licence for reform. It points to genuine participation, credible and recognisable evidence, decisions made as close as practicable to where problems arise, and communication sustained consistently over time. 

What sits underneath those practices is a different view of the community’s role. People are not simply an audience to be persuaded after government has developed an answer. They hold knowledge and experience that affect whether a reform will work. 

That has practical consequences. Evidence needs to be rigorous, but also intelligible and connected to people’s experience. Governments need to know where local knowledge and relationships sit and be prepared to share authority where that will produce better decisions. Engagement cannot be a box to tick on the way to implementation. 

None of this is quick work, and the conditions often work against it. Public services are under pressure to respond quickly and visibly, particularly when an issue becomes politically charged. The information environment is fragmented and fast-moving. Some reforms involve genuine conflicts of interest in which one group’s gain may be another’s loss. 

Trust does not make those conflicts disappear. It gives governments more room to acknowledge them honestly, explain the choices involved and make decisions that people may regard as fair even when they disagree with the outcome. 

The question for public sector leaders 

The question for public sector leaders is not simply how to communicate decisions better. It is whether the everyday work of institutions they lead is building the trust that will be required when hard choices come. 

This means resisting the instinct to treat a loss of trust primarily as a reputational problem. Instead, the leadership task is to consistently protect space for genuine participation, value local knowledge and test whether the experience of a service matches what government has promised. 

Nor is this a call for public servants to simply do more. Many are already working under intense pressure. It is a call to recognise the significance of work that can otherwise look small or mundane: a clearer letter, a cleaner process, a decision properly explained, a conversation handled differently. 

Those things matter because trust is cumulative. Public institutions cannot assume that authority inherited from the past will be enough for the challenges ahead. They have to keep earning it. 

For those who lead public institutions then, perhaps the question is simpler: are we leaving them with more trust than we inherited, and therefore better able to carry the difficult decisions that lie ahead? 

This article is adapted from Professor Caron Beaton-Wells’ David Hawkes Oration, “Where Trust Lives: The Everyday Work of Public Servants”, delivered to IPAA Northern Territory in Darwin in August 2026. The full IPAA NT David Hawkes Oration is available here