The federal government is fond of talking about how it wants the public to trust the government.

For example, Mark Dreyfus, the attorney-general told The Monthly of his aim to build “trust in government integrity and accountability”; Clare O’Neil, as home affairs minister, told the Museum of Australian Democracy she’d appointed a taskforce to help “restore public trust in government”; and on his website, the prime minister boasts of how “we’ve introduced significant reforms to restore the public’s trust and faith in government, its institutions, and the political system more broadly”.