While trust in government is up, Australians continue to see corruption as a major problem.

The number of Australians that view corruption as either a ‘very big’ or ‘quite big’ problem has risen 5 percentage points over the past two years – from 61 per cent in 2018 to 66% in October 2020.

The proportion of people who think the federal government is handling corruption issues “very badly” has risen from 15% to 19.4% over the same time period.

Meanwhile, trust in federal and state governments has improved. Trust in the federal and state level of government ‘to do a good job in carrying out its responsibilities’ has risen 15 and 14 percentage points respectively since 2018. This correlates with a recent PwC survey that found an increased trust in government during the COVID-19 pandemic.