Who do you think you are?

Excerpted from this article published in the Sydney Morning Herald
 
The 2011 Ipsos Mackay Report, titled Being Australian, released this week, reveals both a constancy in Australian values - suspicion of, if not downright hostility to, corporate power; a lack of pretension; and a not especially reverential attitude towards authority - and a remarkable shift in views since 1988, when the last Ipsos Being Australian report was completed.
 
In short, Australians are far more concerned about overwork than dole-bludging, and the days of hero-worshipping sportsmen and revelling in a beer-soaked recreational culture are over. Reflecting the feedback of the survey's discussion groups, corporate greed and big business practices are worrying consumers who fear that with longer working hours and stricter work conditions are forcing them to miss out on the perks of the Australian lifestyle.
 
Union membership has plummeted to 15 per cent in the private sector but the report suggests a continuing attachment to the idea of workplace solidarity. A survey respondent is quoted saying, ''We want to do our eight hours a day and (we) expect to go home to spend time with the family, our kids...Big business has made shops open longer and even though we might be part-time, our week is stretched out a lot more because they can make the hours any time they like and we have to fit our lifestyle around it. So your whole weekend is wrecked...Your weekend isn't your weekend, any more. They get to decide when your weekend is and your time with your family.''
 
Instead of the dole-bludgers and slackers image that participants in the 1988 study feared would increase, participants in 2011 wondered whether Australia had gone to the other extreme and transformed into a nation of workaholics and alcoholics.
 
The findings also reflect the results of recent polls by Essential Research in which most people either opposed, or were ambivalent towards, proposals by politicians to crack down further on welfare recipients. There seems to be less political advantage nowadays in the anti-welfare populism that characterised debate in the 1980s and 1990s. This angst about overwork manifests itself not just in the ever-present debate about work-life balance - what John Howard famously called the ''barbecue stopper'' - but in the immigration debate.
 
Where Australians once complained that migrants came to Australia to take advantage of pensions and the dole, they now fret about industrious and ambitious new Australians all too willing to work overtime and on weekends. One respondent summed up the feeling: ''Companies want workers to work long hours and they go to these foreign workers who will do those hours.''
 
One of the unchanging passions of Australians: sport. In 2011, as in 1988, the participants nominated sportsmen and sportswomen as ''heroes''. But the difference is that these days they know they are exaggerating when they use the term. The sporting scandals have sapped whatever admiration existed for athletes. Survey participants expressed disgust at that way bad behaviour by sports stars was overlooked or even celebrated in Australia simply because of their sporting achievements and hero status.
 
Australians may recognise the cricketing talent of a Shane Warne or the football prowess of a Brendan Fevola or Ben Cousins, but they are unwilling to invest them with any respect, let alone hold them up as role models. If people are willing to give sportsmen an occasional pass for their obnoxious exploits, it is because, Huntley says, that over the past 20 years they have come to recognise the ''dark side'' of Australia's recreational culture. Australians are increasingly worried about the impact of booze.
 
While the barbecue and beer remain the quintessential, and cherished, expression of the Australian lifestyle, and while beer continues to have an egalitarian image, participants in the study understood the damage binge drinking was inflicting on society. ''Drinking is certainly part of the Australian identity. The minute you turn 18, it's partying for months, which involves drinking all night. There's so much bingeing now,'' one respondent said.
 
''There's nothing wrong with a drink, don't get me wrong,'' another said. ''There's nothing wrong with a gun, either, until you shoot it...It's the big evil in the Australian way of life. The alcohol, if they don't do something soon, it's just going to get worse and get out of hand.''
 
While there are remarkable similarities in the Ipsos surveys studies of 1988 and 2011, Australian attitudes have matured. In 1988, Ipsos report author, Hugh Mackay, characterised Australia, as it celebrated the bicentenary of European settlement, as having a ''teenage'' mentality. But in the decades since, Australians have become more economically literate and more conflicted in their patriotism.
 
Survey participants were acutely aware that the mining boom, which has kept the national income high, would not last forever. They gave it another 20, maybe 30, years. And it did not take a Harvard fellowship for them to recognise the rise of China and India as economic players was likely to have a big role in determining Australia's destiny.
 
On the one hand, participants believed the boisterous ''oi, oi, oi'' patriotism was increasing (even if the sporting war cry is unoriginal, derived from English soccer fans). Since the 2000 Olympics, Australians more readily drape themselves in the flag, tattoo it on their bodies or paint it on their faces.
 
Yet, paradoxically, the survey recorded concern about the excesses of nationalism. Some participants recoiled at the development of American-style patriotism in Australia; others accepted that for many indigenous Australians, Australia Day was ''invasion day''; others questioned political manipulation of the Anzac story.
 
Huntley says that while the abstract concept of multiculturalism often confuses, and sometimes annoys, Australians, in practice it is largely accepted. Where opposition to multiculturalism exists, it is less the result of racial or ethnic animus, and more a suspicion of particular cultural practices (usually associated with the tradition among some Muslim women of veiling themselves).
 
The report also offers little encouragement to the advocates of constitutional change, finding ''not much momentum for a republic or a new flag''. Participants were largely apathetic or uninterested in such a campaign.
 
While respondents liked to claim ''resilience'', ''mateship'' and generosity as Australian attributes, Huntley says that, on reflection, many also conceded these were universal values.
 
Indeed, the report suggests that two decades on, Australians are still struggling to define a uniquely Australian identity in a polyglot country. It is struggle summed up by one participant, in what one might mischievously suggest is a uniquely Australian way.
 
''In essence, everyone's values are the same … How are we different? What values have we got that makes us different to anybody else? We keep saying 'Australian'. What's different? That we like sports? So does every other country, too … and drinking? Are Australians big drinkers? Are we good friends at pubs? Shit, that happens everywhere.''
 
Excerpted from this article published in the Sydney Morning Herald Copyright © 2011 Fairfax Media
 

Contact information:

Hugh Mackay, Principal, Mackay Research