EP #25: Bridging the trust divide

Professor Mark Evans (Ph.D.) is Director of Democracy 2025 and Professor of Governance at the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis.

Mark is an expert in the study and practice of governance and policy analysis.

He has a long track record of achievement in developing high quality, values-driven, knowledge institutions built around outstanding research with policy impact, relevant professional development programs, and creative partnerships with governance actors with a common commitment to delivering policy and leadership which delivers genuine public value.

“Democracy 2025 – bridging the trust divide” is a unique collaboration between MoAD and foundation partner UC-IGPA that will see a centre established at the spiritual home of Australian Democracy, Old Parliament House, that will generate research, education and practice to enhance the quality of democratic engagement.

It will bring together academic study and debate with public engagement opportunities such as events and exhibitions to investigate and experiment with what works in terms of renewing our representative system of government and facilitate evidenced-based cross partisan conversations on how to improve our democratic practices.

Discussed in this episode:

• Communication is the oxygen of any organisation
• The complexity for modern government, is that there is no one audience
• We’re in a different era of government and it’s so important for the Australian Public Service to win hearts and minds of citizens and engage in better storytelling about the great work that it does
• We need a great diversity in the workforce in order to understand the different channels of communication that will have any impact
• If current trends continue no more than 10% of Australians will trust their politicians and political institutions