Trust in government in post-Covid slump while young fuel fall in national pride: report

National pride has continued to decline over the last 15 years, and trust in government has fallen after a Covid-driven spike, a new report finds.

Grattan Institute chief executive Danielle Wood. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Geraghty

Australians’ sense of national pride and belonging continues to fall, with the disconnect most acute among younger generations.

And, while trust in government spiked during the pandemic, it has fallen away since 2021, a new report finds.

The Australian Cohesion Index 2023, compiled by the Scanlon Foundation Research Institute, also shows increasing recognition and support for multiculturalism and diversity.

The Index, which measures key markers of the nation’s social and economic landscape across the past 15 years to gauge overall social cohesion, finds that in 2022 one in two adults (52 per cent) said they have “a great sense of belonging in Australia”, a 20-percentage-point decline since 2007.

The sense of national pride and belonging is falling among the nation’s young people.

“(This) is particularly notable in young people and those struggling financially, (with) a drop of 27 per cent over the last 15 years in those who have a great sense of belonging in Australia,” report author and ACI lead researcher James O’Donnell said.

The report finds that in 2022 just 34 per cent of 18-24-year-olds and 31 per cent of 25-34-year-olds said they have a great sense of belonging in Australia, compared with 75 per cent of those 65 and over. While this proportion fell across all age groups between 2007 and 2022, the decline was more than four times greater for younger adults.

“This is concerning as a sense of belonging describes the extent to which we feel connected to others and is a critical driver of social cohesion,” Dr O’Donnell said.

He notes another key component of social cohesion – trust in government – has been a mixed picture. “We have some work to do in building trust in government and the political system. Trust increased during the Covid-19 pandemic but has declined since 2021.”

The report, based on a survey of 6000 participants and in-depth interviews with dozens of people and complementary data from other sources such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics, finds trust in the federal government was below the average across developed nations and substantially below the leading nations, Finland and Norway.

In 2022, 41 per cent of people said the federal government could be trusted to do the right thing by the Australian people all or most of the time, down from 54 per cent in July 2020 but higher than the 36 per cent in 2019.

Writing in the report, Grattan Institute chief executive Danielle Wood said while the high levels of trust in government during the “crisis phase” of the pandemic were never likely to be maintained it was “at least promising that in 2022 trust levels were still above the long-term average”.

“Trust is the political capital that our leaders draw on to make hard policy decisions, and building this capital is crucial for supporting the necessary actions on big, but slow-moving, challenges such as climate change and population ageing,” Ms Wood said.

The report finds that growing numbers of Australians value the social, cultural and economic benefits of migration.