Australians have never been more distrustful of corporate entities since Roy Morgan began measuring trust and distrust in late 2017.
According to Roy Morgan the distrust has only escalated since 2020, often attributed to corporations taking questionable actions under the guise of the COVID-19 pandemic but by 2023, this corporate distrust has taken a nosedive, fueled by economic uncertainties, data breaches, and corporate scandals.
Source: Roy Morgan Single Source (Australia). Risk Monitor, 12 month average to June 2023.
Base: Australians 14+, Latest 12 month average n=25,662.
Some high-profile incidents that escalated this distrust include the PwC tax scandal, data breaches at Optus and Medibank, Harvey Norman's JobKeeper scandal, Rio Tinto's destruction of the Juukan Gorge, and Qantas' refusal to pay back COVID handouts while still making significant profits.
These incidents aren't just considered bad business; they're viewed as morally reprehensible.
Respondents often cited excessive greed, arrogance, and a lack of professional integrity as key reasons for their distrust.
Australians say:
“All the reasons are currently emblazoned across our newspapers.
Excessive greed and arrogance and seeming absence of professional integrity.”
Corrupt; too much access to power has gone to their collective head; seem to have no mechanisms for maintaining integrity.”
The CEO is a disgusting greedy individual, who is a poor employer, makes use of people, governments and society for his own personal aggrandisement.”
Source: Roy Morgan Single Source (Australia). Risk Monitor, 12 month average to June 2023.
Base: Australians 14+, Latest 12 month average n=25,662. Profit motivations n=5,658.
Interestingly, in a twist, Facebook/Meta has been dethroned as Australia's most distrusted brand by telecommunications giant Optus, following a major data breach in September 2022.
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Even though Facebook’s distrust score has improved slightly, Optus has overtaken them as the front runner in the distrust race.
More than three years after the destruction of the 46,000-year-old sacred Indigenous site, Juukan Gorge, Australians continue to nominate Rio Tinto as a company they distrust.
Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine says that this alarming increase in distrust following major scandals shows the dire consequences of moral blindness and reinforces the importance of ethics in business.
“From the onset of COVID corporate leaders had to respond with agility, often sidestepping the checks and balances. This got many of them through the pandemic recession.
But once the crisis had passed, they found the new freedoms they had enjoyed under the cover of COVID hard to relinquish, and a kind of Moral Blindness became endemic.
The pandemic made it easier for leaders to look the other way, to avoid facing the ethical repercussions of their behaviour.
Fundamentally, we need to arrest this trend and embrace a decency principle while at the same time ensuring company directors put distrust on their boards’ risk registers.”
The bottom line
The report underscores the damaging impact of this endemic 'Moral Blindness,' where the pursuit of profits overtakes community interests and ethical considerations.
This report serves as a stark reminder that ethics and trust are not just philosophical ideas; they have real-world implications for businesses and the economy.
Given that distrust is not just a 'perception' but a very tangible problem, tackling it requires more than mere corporate PR stunts.
There needs to be a genuine alignment between a company’s actions and community values, and as Levine puts it, it's time to "embrace a decency principle."
So, in my opinion, the increasing distrust isn't just bad for brands; it's an existential threat to the entire corporate landscape in Australia.
If businesses don't start actively working to rebuild this trust, they risk more than just their bottom line; they risk their social license to operate.
