Scott Ryan on trust, partisanship and why he left Turnbull’s frontbench

The new Senate president says he wasn't fleeing stress or disappointment - he just wanted the job

The new Senate president, Scott Ryan, knows full well institutions in the modern era have fallen on hard times, with declining levels of public trust.

But if politics is the art of compromise, of synthesis between competing ideas, trust is what the process requires. "I've always thought that trust was important to compromise," Ryan says.