But first, at a time when Australians are holding record levels of personal debt new research finds there's been a significant shift over the last two decades in our attitudes to saving money. Social Researcher, Hugh Mackay's in depth study of Australians and money also reveals that banks rage is back with a vengeance and that there's a new user pays attitude to retirement and the pension. Hugh Mackay, welcome and thanks for coming in. Let's talk first about this change in Australians attitudes to debt.
Saving is now out of fashion.
The idea that saving is a virtue of itself, that we should save, seems now to be yesterday's idea. We've become so pre-occupied with the concept of lifestyle with creating a lifestyle that part of the process is we've decided we can't ever quite afford to wait for the lifestyle we want. We want it now. You borrow and spend. And even now when people talk about the need to invest for the future they're just as likely to talk about borrowing to invest and investment as a form of savings, so the whole culture has shifted in the space of really 15 or 20 years which is quite breathtakingly quick from the idea that we needed to save up for things to the idea that that's a waste of time, that that's tedious, that all this credit is available so we should use it and get what we want now, and as part of the process by the way, credit seems to have a quite different meaning from debt.