Engaging and informing the public on the standards landscape is likely to be the Ethics and Integrity Commission’s toughest task, its chair has said.
Appearing at a session of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee on Tuesday, Chalmers was asked about the EIC’s responsibility to “engage and inform the wider public on the values, rules and oversight mechanisms that govern standards in public life” – one of six duties set out in its terms of reference.
Chalmers said this is a “big" and "very difficult" function as there is “a lot of misunderstanding and we need to start working our way to try to improve that”.
The EIC chair said the backdrop of low trust in individuals in public office and in public institutions and the accompanying "disengagement" makes this a tricky task, but also “the complexity of a governance system makes some of it quite impenetrable to get through”.
“Of all the tasks we’ve got, that’s probably the hardest one, also because we know we cannot do it alone,” he said. “We’re going to be doing it in partnership as we go along.”
Chalmers said the EIC has begun by developing an engagement strategy, and he believes it will take “about three years to test that plan and then iterate it and evolve it”.
Asked how he will measure the impact and success of that engagement, Chalmers said the EIC check on clicks of its documents and feedback from the events it runs, which will “give us a feel for whether what we're doing in the engagement strategy is getting, what's the phrase, cut through”.
Chalmers said he also doesn’t expect huge change in next few years year to the Ipsos veracity poll, which asks the public about people in different types of professions and whether they would trust them to tell the truth.
The latest update, from December 2025, found 52% of people trusted civil servants, while just 14% trusted government ministers, and only 9% trusted politicians generally.
“It's going to take us several years, I think, before we see any change, and that's being optimistic, if I'm being truthful,” he said.
National Centre for Social Research data published last year, meanwhile, shows that in 2024 a record low 12% of people trusted government to place the needs of the nation above the interests of their party, down from 24% in 2021 and 40% back in 1986.