'Ritualistic smooching based on fear campaigns': Ian Chubb on elections

"I've had to deal with seven prime ministers and 35 to 40 ministers in various guises and various levels of competence," Professor Chubb told a Senate hearing on Friday. "So I know a bit, I've seen a lot and I've got ample cause to be anxious. I find the present state of the country depressing and the future as I see it uncertain."

Professor Chubb, former vice-chancellor of the Australian National University, said Australians wanted valued and principled leadership - "straight honest, open, persuasive, insightful, smart, intelligent - but instead we're "treated like mugs" by self-interested politicians.

"It's too often power without wisdom, we get cliches thrown around as if they mean something. Elections are critical, but ours tend to end up ritualistic smooching based on fear campaigns and kissing babies, pure opposition rather than a genuine contest of ideas and a cliched concern for we, the people, that soon fades," he said.

"We see expertise belittled and cherry picked. Climate change is a great example of that, an endless example of that in this country, but the list goes on. Half-truths are the order of the day."

Professor Chubb, representing the Australian Academy of Science, was speaking at a Senate inquiry into the state of Australia's democracy, an inquiry set up by a long-time leader in Labor's left, Kim Carr, and emerging leader in right-wing thinking Liberal Amanda Stoker.

A number of people who gave evidence at the first hearing on Friday blamed the lack of trust on politicians themselves.

Professor Chubb said the lack of trust in politics was down to the way politicians behaved - with question time "a disgrace", public funds being used wrongly, and more lenient rules applying to politicians than to others.

"What should we think as an Australian citizen when we see that a letter that included false data is not being investigated because it caused low-level harm," he said, referring to the police decision to drop an investigation against Angus Taylor because of the "low-level of harm" the false document had caused, his apology and the resources an investigation would take.

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"Every drip on a stone is integral to the integrity of the stone, every single drip," Professor Chubb said. "And if low level harm is ok for public officials to use to try to get an advantage over others then I don't know where this country is heading.

He called for an education system that gave everyone a basic understanding of science.

"I know a lot of politicians and I know that many of them try to do the right thing most of the time, and a like a lot of them. Sadly, the behaviour of others drags down the trust in all of them when not all of them deserve it."

University of Sydney political scientist Sarah Cameron said trust in government had reached its lowest level over 50 years of election research, since the Whitlam dismissal - one of the "indicators of tremendous concern for a democracy like Australia".

In 2007 Australians had been among the most satisfied with democracy in the world - on a par with Norway and Switzerland, so the decline was steep, not gradual. Nor was it universal, with satisfaction relatively stable in New Zealand and Canada.

Her research suggested the fall was down to political and economic performance - six prime ministers in eight years, pessimism about the economy, and the "steady stream of political scandals which are giving the impression to voters that people in government are more concerned about advancing their own interests or fighting amongst themselves rather than governing in the national interest".

People had been happier with the state of democracy in 1996 when John Howard won and in 2007 when Kevin Rudd won. The same was not seen in 2013 when the Coalition returned to power under Tony Abbott.

Sam Roggeveen, director of the Lowy Institute's International Security Program, said much of the political instability in Australia over the past decade was a result of the decline of mainstream centre-right and centre-left parties.

But fears that the public was losing faith in democracy and turning towards populists and authoritarians were overstated. While populist parties were on the rise, populist sentiment was not, he said. Previously the major parties had a lock on populist sentiment and were able to co-opt it or suppress it. But the major parties had become weaker, and new populist parties had set up, which meant the relatively stable minority of people with right-wing populist views now had their own parties.

The evidence for "dark warnings about xenophobia and latent fascism" was mixed at best, he said. Australian attitudes were steady or becoming more liberal on abortion, gender equality, indigenous issues, drugs and immigration, he said, pointing to the comfortable win for same-sex marriage. In a 2019 Lowy Institute Poll, attitudes were largely positive towards globalisation and immigration.

Dr Jonathan Cole, assistant director of the Public and Contextual Theology Research Centre at Charles Sturt University, said while Australians were deserting the major parties, they had not deserted the movements, with membership growing exponentially of Get Up on the left and the Australian Christian Lobby on the right. Both had become powerful political organisations despite not being political parties.