As a Canadian I hope this doesn’t come here, though it seems to be creeping in year by year, and as you said it could be entrenched in two generations.

I always thought of Aussies as flippant and carefree, but rugged and hardworking. It seems like there is a new streak of nanny-statism and parochial mindedness similar to ‘Little Englanders’ in the UK; but knowing a little bit about your political history, maybe it was always there among the affluent colonial class vs the farmers and herders.