An ever-increasing demand that they do shift work, especially at weekends, was crimping their hobby of fishing. ''They were actually strong environmentalists, in their own way,'' says Huntley, ''worried about water pollution and corporate interests but also worried about political greenies trying to stop them.

''They might have really hated the current refugee policy but, ultimately, they didn't care.''

What Huntley, the director of the Ipsos Mackay Report, discovered in her research was that the participants in her focus

groups - selected to represent all demographic groups and voting habits - wanted to care about everything but asylum seekers. Only the politicians don't get it. ''If you are not giving Australians anything else [to discuss], they will blame problems on immigration and asylum seekers.''

The 2011 Ipsos Mackay Report, Being Australian, released this week, is based on in-depth fieldwork conducted in March, involving more than 100 men and women, from lower-middle to upper-middle socio-economic groups, participating in 15 group discussions in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Newcastle and Ballarat. It 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 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. ''If you were to ask me what really stood out about the change in attitudes,'' Huntley says, ''it would be those three things - work, sport and booze.''

If there is a political lesson to be gleaned from the report, it is that, despite the results of recent opinion polls showing the Labor Party's primary vote wallowing at 27 per cent, Australians in 2011 generally embrace a social democratic world view, at least on the economy, the workplace and public services. ''Big business undermines our way of life,'' says the report, reflecting the feedback of the discussion groups.

''Corporate greed and big business practices were a source of concern for some consumers who feared that with longer working hours and stricter work conditions, they were missing out on the perks of the Australian lifestyle.''

The response of insurance companies and banks to the widespread floods this year unleashed a deep-seated hostility to prerogatives of corporate Australia, which people saw as at odds with the average wage earner. ''What's un-Australian at the moment seems to be big business cheating the people,'' one respondent said.

''Insurance companies up north right now are saying, 'Well, your policy said this, therefore we can't pay up on the policy, even though you were flooded.' That's un-Australian - you should give them the money, anyway, because they're doing it hard.''

While union membership has plummeted to 15 per cent in the private sector, the report suggests a continuing attachment to the idea of workplace solidarity, especially on rights that most Australians believed were cemented into the culture long ago. ''Being Australian, we want to do our eight hours a day and expect to go home to spend time with the family, our kids and that,'' another focus group participant said.

''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.''

Such sentiments resound throughout the pages of the report, with respondents saying such things as, ''Your weekend isn't your weekend, any more. They get to decide when your weekend is and your time with your family.''

That resentment of the might of the corporation - of the life-shaping power of the boss - is palpable, and the report concludes attitudes to work have shifted 180 degrees in the past 20 years. ''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 Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott to crack down even more 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, Huntley says 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.''

But Huntley says the focus groups convinced her that political parties, and most obviously Labor, could neutralise immigration and refugee resettlement as an issue if they could convince Australians not to squander their vote on a protest because more valuable programs or reforms could be at risk. ''Parties can win despite the immigration issue but they have to offering something more.''

Being Australian also confirms the research of the Macquarie University academic Shaun Wilson and the polling analyst Tony Mitchelmore, who found, for example, that a Labor Party playing to its traditional strengths - public investment in health, education and infrastructure and committed to a progressive tax system - could overcome an unpopular immigration policy.

''If you lined up the thinking of working class Australians, using that term broadly, you would find it is generally social democratic,'' Wilson says. ''It's just that Labor in government has been too scared to say they are not going to let the rich run the country.''

At first glance, it is one of the unchanging passions of Australians: sport and its practitioners. 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.

''We don't have a lot of national heroes nowadays, so to speak,'' one participant said.

''Well, you have your sporting heroes,'' another said, albeit with little enthusiasm.

The litany of sporting scandals - such as group sex involving rugby league teams, AFL players using drugs, and cricketers ''sexting'' their fans - has sapped whatever admiration existed for athletes. ''There was concern that some contemporary sport stars abused their position,'' Being Australian says. ''Participants expressed disgust that 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, as this exchange between two men illustrates: ''Look at Ben Cousins.''

''Fevola as well. So much talent and just throwing it away because he's made a fool of himself.''

''How does he look to the rest of the world when they see him the way he behaves?''

''He's going to make his millions.''

''Well, he shouldn't. He should be robbed of all his millions and discouraged to do that.''

And it is not simply the immorality, self-indulgence or bad taste of high-profile athletes that repulsed many participants. It is that their egos - fed by high salaries and the often flirty attention of hard-core fans - jar with what the Ipsos Mackay report finds is a loathing of pretension and conceit. As one participant put it: ''Something that's probably un-Australian is big-noting yourself and saying how awesome you are. 'Look at me, I've done so well.' You just get absolutely hammered.

''Even if you have done amazingly well, if you come out and say it, you just get slaughtered … people immediately have an aversion to those people.

''We also recognise that whilst you might be good, you're not that good.''

High-profile medicos - such as the eye surgeon Fred Hollows (who died in 1993), the cancer surgeon Chris O'Brien (who died in 2009), the brain surgeon Charlie Teo and the burns specialist Fiona Wood - drew almost universal acclaim as ''ordinary heroes''. As one woman said: ''They're passionate. They're courageous. They're not frightened to speak out for what they believe in. They're hard-working, but not for monetary gain.''

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 man 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.''

Another man went even further: ''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 Being Australian studies of 1988 and 2011, Huntley says it is also clear that Australian attitudes have matured. In 1988 her predecessor, 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.

The 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. ''The Australia Day celebrations … for the first time in my life, for the past couple of years, I've seen people actually hang flags over their cars and in their houses, which is great to see,'' one woman said. ''I'm telling you, it's great to see.''

Yet, paradoxically, Being Australian reflected an underlying 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. As one respondent put it: ''Why do you think we see Anzac as a moment in time that made Australia, when it was a disastrous campaign? Twenty thousand casualties. We never got off the beach for a start. How do you reconcile that with how we see it now?''

Huntley says that while the abstract concept of multiculturalism often confuses, and sometimes annoys, Australians, in practice it is largely accepted. ''People's [hostile] views on immigration and multiculturalism may seem remarkably intransigent,'' she says. ''But there is a lot in this that is comforting in that these views rarely go beyond fear and anxiety. They are rarely acted out in racist behaviour.''

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.

As Huntley and her colleagues were doing the fieldwork for the report in March, in the aftermath of the floods and of cyclone Yasi in Queensland, they also found attitudes to the Australian identity and character were more complex than they initially appeared.

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.''

Follow Andrew West on Twitter @andrewwestSMH