![]() ![]() They consider Canada and Australia “pools of calm in the storm”.īut while we thankfully have not experienced riots at Parliament House, the Navigator survey shows there is clearly little trust from the public in our institutions. The Americans are thinking deeply about such issues after the lies and violence of their recent presidential campaign. Otherwise, we’re in for decades of grinding conflict between traditional centres of authority and the general public, who doubt both their loyalty and competence.” “The leaders of tomorrow will need a new message and style if they hope to maintain any legitimacy in this less hierarchical world. “Some popular movements have come to view any attempt to exercise power over others as suspect,” the podcast continues. The aggrieved are united by what they don’t like, but are “without a shared agenda for how to move forward or the institutional infrastructure to figure out how to fix things”. “Suspicious they are being betrayed by elites, the public can also use technology to coordinate spontaneously and express its anger,” the podcast says. Today, those flaws are all too evident and it’s impossible to prevent someone from “broadcasting any grievance online, whether it’s a contrarian insight or an insane conspiracy theory”. The 80,000 Hours podcast puts it this way: “In 1959, the president could control the narrative by leaning on his friends at four TV stations, who felt it was proper to present the nation’s leader in a positive light, no matter their flaws.” “As people were exposed to more information, their trust in major institutions – like the government or newspapers – began to collapse.” He says Mr Gurri noticed that when the internet led to an explosion of information, there was a “concurrent spike in political instability” because governments “lost their monopoly on information and, with it, their ability to control the public conversation”. ![]() He cites Martin Gurri, a former media analyst at the CIA and the author of the 2014 book The Revolt of the Public. He says the internet unleashed a “tsunami of misinformation and destabilised political systems” across the world. Sean Illing, writing for Vox, says the loss of faith in public institutions is “one of the greatest challenges facing democratic societies in the 21st century”. The problem is common to other democracies. Read more: Millennials disillusioned with democracy While 66 per cent of Australians think it’s important to have a say in decisions made on their behalf, only 30 per cent believe they can influence Australia’s future and 13 per cent believe they have no influence. Only half of the respondents think Australia is performing well as a democracy. While Australians still believe in democracy, their belief is “fragile”, the report said, with 64 per cent of respondents indicating that continuing as a Western liberal democracy is important. The report also found that 61 per cent of respondents don’t think Australia is a better country than it was five to 10 years ago, while only 39 per cent are confident that Australia will be better in five to 10 years’ time. Only 27 per cent of respondents believe that governments prioritise voters above others, and just 34 per cent feel that governments consider the impact on future generations when making decisions. This is a clear fail for the political class,” he says. “Our research found that four in five Australians believe politicians have the most say in setting priorities for Australia, but only one in five believe politicians are acting in the public interest. Next25 executive director Ralph Ashton says one conclusion we can draw is that “whatever the government is doing, it isn’t working”. The report concludes Australian institutions are “not in touch with the needs of the people”. It says low scores in these categories are a “major problem” for a democracy. These outcomes come from the Next25 Navigator report, which analyses our aspirations for the country. The media received a score of 26 per cent, while other institutions performed better, with experts/academia receiving 37 per cent and business hitting 32 per cent. Only 27 per cent of Australians believe the public service acts in the public interest and only 22 per cent think politicians act in the public interest. ![]()
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