The latest Australian Election Survey has found trust in government is at an all-time low, and our pollies and pundits are spooked.   

But this is good news — we should not trust pollies. In a liberal democracy, we should have a healthy dose of scepticism about them, because there are many good reasons not to trust them: poor policy, reactive policy, nanny-state policy… I could go on.  

Too often, governments introduce policies that are based on weak evidence or even despite a preponderance of evidence outlining their likely failure.    

For example, successive federal and state governments have forsaken evidence-based education policy in favour of faddish flops; the...