Abstract
Australia's form of democracy is suffering a crisis of public confidence. In one major record of public opinion, confidence in government was 40 percent, the second-lowest point since records commenced in 1969. This research project has investigated one aspect of the democratic contract between a government and its citizenry: government openness with its public and the effect of this on public trust. It is an area of research that is not well investigated. Focusing on circumstances where governments should be focused on the interests of their citizens and not on themselves, the research project investigated the crisis narrative of the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, specifically the official commentaries of the Malaysian and Australian governments and their agencies. These official statements were subjected to review using a case study approach involving qualitative methods. This analysis found three distinctive discourses; the first focused almost singularly on the Malaysian government's efforts to meet the needs of the families of those lost in the disaster; the second was almost exclusively related to search operations and operational information provided by search agencies when operations shifted to the Southern Indian Ocean; and the third related to the strategic opportunities explored by the Australian government during search operations in the southern search arc. It was found that existing crisis communication models do not reflect the pressures and demands of the contemporary information environment. Furthermore, the research data and their analysis led to the conclusion and recommendation that a more open government may be required in the current political environment in which public trust has been declining.