This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Only half of Australians trust broadsheet print media, and only a third say they trust senior government officials, in wide-ranging survey data shared exclusively with the Guardian.

A YouGov–Cambridge Globalism Project, which includes a survey of 1,006 Australians, found 55% believe politicians are listening to them less, 63% believe the people running the government are “crooked” and 76% feel that “important information” is being concealed from the public.

In small towns especially frustration with the government was high, with only 6% of people believing the government had “gotten better at listening to them” over the past five years. Television is the most trusted news source in Australia, the survey found.

Sixty-two per cent of Australians said they trusted television news “a great deal” or a “fair amount”, compared with 50% for print and 46% for online.

Younger Australians aged 18 to 24 were the least likely to trust online-only news sites and TV news, and trust in social media was highest in the 25 to 34 age bracket.

Australians are also more sceptical of social media (74%) than many of the other countries surveyed, including the US and Canada, but less distrustful than countries in Europe such as Britain (84%) or Sweden (81%).

In terms of government corruption and trust in our officials, those surveyed were also mostly negative – especially in small towns.

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Overall, 61% said they distrusted senior national government officials and 63% said “quite a few” of the people running the government were “crooked”. While 13% of those who lived in a city centre or large town said they trusted federal officials “a great deal”, this dropped to only 6% of those in a suburb and 3% of those in a small town.

In all, 46% of those in the centre of their city or town had trust in officials, compared to 22% of those in a small town.

Globally, this was consistent with other countries, with Australians only six percentage points below the global mean of 40% trust in our federal officials.

Those who had a negative view of globalisation – both its economic impact and its social impact – also had lower trust in government.

Of those who thought globalisation was bad for the economy, only 18% trusted senior officials – compared to the 34% average. For those who felt it affected their standard of living, it was 13%.

But even those who were positive towards globalisation still felt that the government was crooked.

Seventy-seven per cent of those who said globalisation improved living standards said they felt information was being concealed, and 62% said the government was crooked.

In fact, most Australians agreed, with 76% of the overall respondents agreeing that information was being concealed from the public.

Australians also believed that politicians listened to them less over the past five years with 55% saying this problem had gotten worse or much worse, 24% saying it was the same, and only 16% saying it had gotten better.

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This diverged starkly when comparing the regions and the cities. In city centres, 31% felt the government had gotten better at listening to them, while in small towns, it was only 6%.

Liberal/National voters had markedly higher trust in print papers compared to Labor voters. Coalition voters had 60% trust, compared to 46% of Labor voters.

But for both, television was still the most trusted medium, with 71% trust for Liberal voters and 65% trust for Labor. Greens voters, however, did not show as high a trust for TV. Their 54% trust rate of TV was comparable to their 51% trust for print.

The polling was carried out in February and March 2019.