This report compares Australia’s democracy with other nations over four issues: trust, concern about corruption, strength of democratic standards and the depth of liberal values.

The health of a liberal democracy can be measured by the quality of its political parties - which aggregate people’s demands, formulate policy choices and supposedly, represent their constituents' interests. This report outlines how those who know the system best would reform and improve it.

This report examines the problem of declining public trust from the perspective of a representative sample of federal public servants brought together to deliberate on the role they could play in the renewal of Australia’s democratic practice.

Over the past four years UC-IGPA and MoAD have conducted a range of quantitative surveys with the Social Research Institute at Ipsos on the relationship between trust in the political system and attitudes towards democracy. This report updates our findings from 2014 and 2016.

We are witnessing a growing trust divide in Australia which has increased in scope and intensity since 2007. The purpose of this briefing paper is to provide a general understanding of how other democracies are seeking to bridge the trust divide.