The decade when trust went bust

In the fullness of time and in the grand sweep of history, every decade is eventually known for its key events. The 2000s will be forever defined by 9/11 and the Global Financial Crisis. The 1990s was a decade of recession and recovery; the 1980s was a pivot between a regulated Australia and a succeeding freer Australia. In some ways it’s superficial to reduce a decade to a single theme, but when viewed across time and from the highest of altitudes the process can reveal a trendline to show our qualities and where we might be headed.

How might the current decade eventually come to be viewed? It’s tempting to cite something like climate awareness or digital disruption, but these are wallpaper issues that will extend across several decades. The issue this decade isn’t war or economic calamity (slow wages growth doesn’t quite register by this measure) but rather it is social change of an order of magnitude that echoes the 1960s.

The change evident in our decade hasn’t resulted in new life forms such as hippies or odd fashion statements like flares. Instead the 2010s will be remembered as the era in which we lost faith in the very institutions that underpin society. The exposure of appalling behaviour by some members of the clergy and big business undermines the foundations of public trust. This loss of trust breeds cynicism and creates social division; it rationalises self-interest; it is the antithesis of a united, loving and generous society.

We have come 180 degrees since the end of World War II, when all our faith and our hope was placed in the big institutions that delivered the glory of victory from the shadows of defeat: the government, the military, business, the church. That faith, hope and trust was, it turns out, in some quarters poorly placed.

The natural state of humanity is to trust and to be generous and to build. Without these qualities our species would have died off on the African savannah 100,000 years ago. We survived and proliferated because we are tribal beings; we want to place our trust in others. But right now we feel betrayed.

What is required is justice for victims and compassion for survivors, for a period of atonement and contrition by the guilty, and for reform so as to rebuild public trust. And so, eventually, maybe even in the coming decade, there will be a turning; our instinctive qualities will compel us to trust once again.

We have been mightily shaken by the decade’s revelations; it has all unfolded in graphic and confronting detail. What we want to hear now from our politicians and business and church leaders is an acknowledgement of wrongdoing and clear evidence – not just rhetoric – of an unshakable determination to rebuild the public trust that underpins our society.

Given this country’s resources and security, a united people who have faith in their leadership and direction will most surely prosper in the 2020s. But the rebuilding of trust must start now, in the concluding months of this decade.

The Australian people better than most understand the terror and the pain of a bushfire, but we also understand that beyond the devastation lie green shoots and an oddly united and determined community. It’s as if adversity toughens our resolve to live and to succeed in this far-flung beloved place. This is why I believe that in the coming decade Australia will be better and stronger than it has ever been.