You might want to avert your eyes because I'm about to drop a C-bomb.

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Not the one from a decade, infamously recruited in an underground ad campaign to sell tourism to the Northern Territory.

And not the one bellowed in fury by the old bloke next door as he struggles to rethread his whipper snipper.

Instead, it's the C-bomb us Aussies like to kid ourselves doesn't exist. Class. That most British form of social stratification which once divided us into three groups; working, middle and upper. A strong theme in our national mythology is that we're an egalitarian society freed from the social strictures of the Mother Country.

Class is not only alive and well, it's thriving. From that three layered model relied upon throughout the 20th century have emerged six distinct classes for this century, identified in research carried out by the ANU about a decade ago.

The precariat is the most disadvantaged in society, generally unemployed and on welfare. They're followed by ageing workers. With a median age of 58, they're often retired and existing on the age pension.

Next up are new workers, usually employed full-time but lacking the social prestige of their older counterparts. The established middle are better off, having achieved better career security and wealth.

The emerging affluent have greater incomes but fewer assets and savings than the established middle.

Finally, the established affluent, the most wealthy with the most prestige. They'd be an aristocracy if such a thing existed here.

Income is a huge part of the class divide. When the wealthiest 1 per cent of Australians account for 24 per cent of the country's wealth, the egalitarianism on which we pride ourselves starts to look threadbare. But money isn't the whole story.

Attitude plays a big role in class too. We've invented words to characterise and dismiss whole classes of people. Fat cats, big wigs and rich [insert the other C-bomb here]s at one end of society, bogans at the other. We've even democratised the old, snobbish term "nouveau riche" with "cashed up bogan", often on the highway when we're overtaken by a huge (and hugely expensive) American pick-up truck towing ... a jet ski.

It was the........

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