It is clear that, in terms of controlling spread of the disease, Australia has done well so far. Yet, despite this, our underlying trust in government remains weak and is anything but assured.

A government app, which is designed to deliver less information from our phones than we commonly make available to private companies, has quickly become a source of angst in community. Within the blink of an eye, the latitude we have been giving government to pursue decisions in response to COVID-19 disappeared.

This fragility of public trust in government is not specific to the current crisis but is part of a longer-term trend. Falling trust in government has emerged as a defining feature of the early 21st century in mature, rich democratic nations and will be a major factor in how global responses to the pandemic may play out.

Governments are not alone. Public confidence in the integrity and expertise of key economic, social, and cultural institutions has fallen substantially, with distrust characterising consumer attitudes to the media and business, for example.

However, democratic governments, and their bureaucracies, are not simply bystanders in some broader societal shift. Their behaviours and actions have contributed to the problem.

Perhaps ironically, some of the most trusted governments around the world are undemocratic - defined by high levels of official control, low personal freedom and little in the way of government transparency.

The imperative to institute strict social controls in response to COVID-19 has reinforced at least some of these administrations. Their containment response has been faster and, it appears, more effective because coercive powers were already in place, and accepted as legitimate.

Yet they are hardly attributes Australians would wish to adopt.

The surrender of basic freedoms of association and movement governments have mandated are without precedent and present a big test of trust. For Australia, success must lie in the extent to which the mandates are followed voluntarily. This in turn relies on the public being convinced that they are genuinely needed, will be time limited, and that they will make a clear contribution to a better national outcome. Widespread coercion, such as through the mandating of an app, would be failure.

In considering the role of trust in government, before, during and after crises, attention naturally centres on executive government (ministers, their staff, and the public service). This is reasonable. Executive government has by far the largest day-to-day influence on Australian society. Each part of executive government should be acting to build trustworthiness, but it is how they act together that matters most. This is before you add the task of collaborating across the levels of government that define our federation.

The story of how government has lost trust is complicated, with many factors at play. It is unfair to suggest that government is solely responsible for what we see. But past failures by government in four areas help explain both why trust has fallen and what can be done about it.

First: failures of delivery. On the whole, governments in Australia operate reasonably well for their communities - at least when compared globally. But this generally sound performance has been undermined by clear failures of government as a policymaker, regulator, and as service deliverer - as has been vividly demonstrated by a spate of recent royal commissions.

These failures have been magnified by a growing gap between what people expect (or are led to believe) government can achieve and what actually happens on the ground. Over-promising by successive governments has set a bar that (with the benefit of hindsight) they have been unable to scale. The national broadband network and National Disability Insurance Scheme are two prominent examples, but there many more.

Second: failures against basic standards of good governance. The recent sport-grants affair represents the last of a long line of such betrayals. An important principle of democracy is that government decisions are taken in the national interest. Elections do and should give governments an opportunity to pursue their own conception of the nation's interests. But with this opportunity comes a responsibility to act clearly within the law, observe due process, and transparently explain why government decisions or actions are in the national interest and are not skewed to the benefit of a smaller group, individual, or political party.

Failures to meet basic standards of good governance have an insidious impact on trust. The contested nature of national interest makes it hard enough for any government to convince their citizens to support a specific course of action. Where those citizens believe government self-interest and not national interest is driving decisions that task becomes almost impossible.

Third: failures of communication and engagement. The problem here is typically not an absence of consultation but the poor quality of it. Inconsistent and often tokenistic process has, for example, been a feature of government engagement with Australia's first peoples. This has created confusion, disempowerment and accelerated the decline of trust.

Reactive messaging in pursuit of short-term government interests has too often preceded meaningful content and genuine dialogue. This transactional "top-down" approach to communication undermines the ability of government to communicate coherently with the community over time. The end result is a citizenry who questions even the most earnest and important of government communications.

Fourth: ongoing failures to adapt fully to the modern world. Changes in the speed of information transmission have, for example, affected the balance between managing issues of the moment while ensuring society is well placed for the longer-term. To bend Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman's famous construct, (reactive) fast thinking has replaced (considered) slow thinking in government.

When issues first started emerging in relation to banking misbehaviours, age care failures, and problems in the disability system, the first instinct of government has been to manage the symptoms rather than address their deeper causes. And the system has evolved to support this. The consequence of this imbalance is that government lurches from decision to decision rather than setting a clear long-term path. This reflex has been evident in at least some of the response to COVID-19 here and around the world.

Australian governments face an enormous challenge in guiding the nation through the current pandemic. Low trust makes the task harder right at the moment when public confidence in government leadership is crucial. But in the crisis lies an opportunity for government to start the process of building trustworthiness. At times of crisis we naturally look to government for succour; now is such a time.

But as our experience with the app shows, our faith in government has clear limits and starts from a low base. As time goes on, the additional faith we have been showing government in response to the pandemic will be harder to retain.

No one should expect perfection from government as we navigate COVID-19. It is, as the Prime Minister has said, a time where perfection is the enemy of the good.

But it is also important that government learns from past failures. The path to building trust lies in the very purpose of government: setting achievable expectations and delivering on them; adhering to the basic standards of governance; explaining clearly, honestly and holistically; and acting and communicating with a long-term view in mind, despite the noise and speed of the moment.

Doing these things will, in turn, help all of us get through the current crisis and be stronger on the other side.