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If Australia were as laid back as is commonly supposed, you would think it entirely natural that much of its navy will be placed on two months paid leave at the height of the southern summer. Why head to sea when you can head to the beach? Why get shipshape when you can slip, slap, slop?

But the spirit-of-the-season decision of the Defence Department to institute a partial yuletide shut-down has launched the most unlaid back of rows. Responding to the headline, "Navy Closes for Christmas", the opposition defence spokesman, David Johnston, said he was "flabbergasted". Defence Secretary Joel Fitzgibbon said it was a family-friendly initiative - enemy-friendly, as well, the critics would say - that was "just a way of saying thank you and encouraging them to stay in the service".

It recalls the row earlier in the year when the man at the helm of the Australian economy, the Treasury's most powerful civil servant, Ken Henry, took nearly five weeks leave to care for endangered wombats. Given the controversy, you would have thought he had embarked on a hunting expedition rather than a mercy mission.

Why all this fuss about annual leave and holidays? Perhaps it has something to do with Australia being one of the hardest working countries in the world.

Admittedly, the figures are a little stale, but when the OECD conducted a comparative study of international working habits in 2002, it found that only five countries worked harder than Australia (Korea, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Greece and Mexico). New Zealand came next, by the way.

An Australian study of the same vintage showed that the country harboured the greatest proportion of its workforce working in excess of 50 hours a week in the OECD. As the unions noted at the time, 31% of the full-time Australian workforce worked in excess of 48 hours a week. Put another way, if Australia joined the European Union - and there's a thought - almost of third of its full-time workforce would be in violation of European working time directives.

Australia doesn't do any better on mandatory paid maternity or paternity leave either. It is one of only two OECD countries that does not have paid maternity leave (the other is the US).

Is that another product perhaps of the deeply engrained work ethic, which finds expression in the national anthem, Advance Australia Fair. "We've golden soil and wealth for toil....Beneath our Radiant Southern Cross, we'll toil with hearts and hands". An awful lot of toil, no?

So the summer holidays are almost upon us. Time for a well-earned rest.

PS: Some particularly strong comments on the prospects for a black Australian prime minister or president. Among them, SydneyKate and mbrad102, who said the fair comparison should be with native-Americans rather than African-Americans, who make up a far bigger proportion of the population. True, the record in the US is not great. But America has had a vice-president with native American ancestry, Charles Curtis, who served under Herbert Hoover. More recently, Ben Nighthorse Campbell served in the US Senate, a far more powerful body that its Australian equivalent.

PPS: Loved your film lists. I'm still working through all the titles (saw Unfinished Sky the other night, which I thought was great). Did anyone see the comments of Anthony Ginnane, the new president of the Screen Producers Association of Australia? He said that Australian films are "in the main, dark depressing bleak pieces that are the cultural equivalent of ethnic cleansing". Bit strong, perhaps, but does he have a point? Comments please.

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