One of Australia's leading ethicists has said Prime Minister Tony Abbott's failure to return trust to politics has seen him swept up in the high tide of a public challenge to the legitimacy of the nation's democratic institutions.
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But it's only partly Mr Abbott's fault, Ethics Centre executive director Simon Longstaff said.
"There has been over a very long time, a slowly rising tide of concern within the electorate, there have been plenty of things - core promise, non-core promise, Labor and Liberal, wherever you look you can find people, albeit at a thimble at a time if you like, pouring some of the sludge into this tide," he said.
"The really bad luck for Tony Abbott, and it's partly bad luck and partly something of his own making, is to be there at the point when the tide was [neck-high]."
Dr Longstaff, speaking to 200 members of the public at the year's first Senate occasional lecture on Friday, said Mr Abbott had raised hopes and then poured the "next thimble" into the tide, and the widespread lack of trust of politicians had left the country's democracy on the "precipice" of losing legitimacy.
While consciously avoiding laying the blame on one party and refusing to speculate on the Liberal leadership, his message had obvious echoes for a Prime Minister who has been unable to negotiate key reforms through the Senate and was 11 switched votes away from political oblivion this month.
Dr Longstaff, who sits on a range of corporate governance boards, said political parties and the political class were wrong if they thought the public accepted arguments justifying hypocrisy and dishonesty as "just the way things were done".
February 2014's Lowy Institute poll, finding only 42 per cent of 18-29 year olds believed democracy was the best form of government - and a quarter of all adults thought autocracy was preferable in some circumstances - highlighted the disengagement, he said.
The Cambridge doctorate holder said the answer was ethical restraint from politicians, supported by a politicians' pledge about behaviour when chasing and exercising power, including accepting responsibility for decisions.
"As Winston Churchill said on the fall of Singapore, 'I did not know, I wasn't told, I should have asked,'" Dr Longstaff said.
"Now all we hear is, 'I did not know, I wasn't told'."
