Tagging the emerging tribes, from bush to the big smoke

YOU cannot be in the business of demography and not have in your toolkit a collection of cool tags and acronyms.

acronyms

YOU cannot be in the business of demography and not have in your toolkit a collection of cool tags and acronyms for Australia's newest and often edgiest tribes and behaviours. Some that I document below are my inventions, others I have popularised; others again have shot to prominence of their own accord.

The FIFO zone. Just as Europe has its eurozone, Australia has a FIFO zone. Do you know I had not heard of the term FIFO until three years ago? It refers to fly-in, fly-out miners who are recasting the way Australia engages with its interior. We don't want to live there but we do want the riches, the resources and the commodities that flow from its basins and ore seams.

One of the most important data sets to emerge from this year's census (in the middle of next year) will be quantification of the FIFO phenomenon. The zones refer to the Karratha-Pilbara region in Western Australia, Olympic Dam-Prominent Hill in South Australia and Bowen-Surat basins in Queensland.

While FIFO is an efficient and cost-effective way of delivering skills to remote workplaces, I question whether there will be a long-term community cost in relationship breakdowns and possibly delinquency issues associated with mostly husbands and fathers being regularly absent from the family home. I suspect we will know the answer to this question in the 2020s.

The NETTEL. This is an invention of mine. In mid-2009, I wanted a tag to describe cash-rich time-poor families in which both parents work and every day requires careful planning to ensure that each family member gets to their commitments.

About 5 per cent of families in which the parents are aged 35-44 fit the nettel model.

Nettel, of course, stands for Not Enough Time to Enjoy Life and, according to census results, the national nettel hotspot is Curtin in the ACT. The term itself was invented by my PA. Within two days of publication, the term had popped up in the New York Times online new word dictionary.

You know you are a nettel if after the evening meal you and your partner get out your smartphones and co-ordinate the next day's activities.

And if you email the resulting schedule to your nanny, you can consider yourself an uber-nettel. Of course, most nettels dream of becoming pottels: Plenty of Time to Enjoy Life. But few actually achieve the blissful state of potteldom.

The PUMCIN. Again an invention of mine. Scribbled on a piece of paper on my kitchen bench in March this year, as I recall. The pumcin is a marketer's dream: the Professional Urban Middle Class in Nice Suburbs.

Pumcin men are easily spotted on weekends wearing boat shoes (loafers to some), polos and chinos. Pumcin women believe they have a spiritual affinity with the city of Paris.

You know you are just a tad pumcinish if you have goat's cheese in your fridge.

I have this theory that households that eat goat's cheese do not eat McDonald's. The two are mutually exclusive. Maccas will never release a quarter-pounder with goat's cheese.

The KIPPERS. The first time I heard this term was in the early 1990s. I believe it came out of the US, most likely from a market research house.

Of course, it stands for Kids in Parents' Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings, and it is always popular with baby-boomer audiences.

Perhaps this is because kippers hits twice: most kids are at home well into their 20s and many are being indulged by their parents with funds that might otherwise be directed to retirement savings. And it's not hard to understand why kids remain in the family home: free meals, board and laundry.

But I have doubts about boomer parents' motives: they are creating a culture of dependence so kids remain at home, thereby reinforcing the role and authority of parents.

Are you too good to your kids? Of course you are. But the harder question is, what is the real motive for your generosity?

The LOMBARD. This is not my invention ,but I wish it was. We all know a Lombard or two. It stands for Lots of Money But a Real Dickhead.

Only in Australia could such a term emerge. American culture on the other hand is too admiring of the success of others to have invented the Lombard.

Interestingly, in previous eras the Lombard phenomenon thrived but in a very different form. Such people were known as nouveau riche, meaning they had acquired wealth within a single generation.

Australia's first popular-culture example of the Lombard phenomenon might well have been documented in the 1992 joint BBC-ABC reality show, Sylvania Waters.

The CLUMP. This is a recent invention of mine. It describes usually young couples (can be gay or straight; my terms do not discriminate) who live together without necessarily declaring their future intent.

The term stands for Cohabiting Lovers Uncommitted to Marriage or Partnership, and it is required to fill the void that has developed between boyfriend or girlfriend in the late teenage years and fiancee-fiance, which tends to emerge in the late 20s.

Such is the demand for clump, or a concept not unlike clump, that other nationalities have already invented their own versions.

The ever-practical Germans describe such a relationship as lebensabschnittspartner, which translates as "a partner for a section of your life". Need someone to fill the void between 25 and 30? Go out and get yourself a damen or herren lebensabschnittspartner. Wunderbar.

The BANANA: Not an invention of mine, but I do admire this acronym's length, its philosophical direction (to say nothing of its impressive curvature) and its ability to stay on-message.

Banana in this context means Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone. It is a term that the property industry is well familiar with and I suspect that with an entire generation of university-educated, opinionated, articulate and organised baby boomers looking for something to do in retirement, the banana phenomenon can only rise.

The other enticing aspect to being a successful banana is that it is empowering: there must be a great sense of control when a development is blocked. Boomer bananas in the next decade will be hard to beat.

Bernard Salt is a KPMG partner and an adjunct professor with Curtin University's Business School

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