It truly is, I recently read a great article about the coffee shops being run out of a room in people's homes- I would love to sell coffee out of my garage for a few hours before work.
In Japan I was in a city during a local jazz festival. Entire streets shut down, bars with stalls set up on the street selling drinks. Kids intermingled in the alcohol drinking area and you know what? People behaved themselves and had a great time.
Australia, lacking any real problems to solve is like a modern immune system attacking the host because it can't find the invaders it should be taking care of.
And Perth ... the zoning here seems to work in a way that suburbs don't get shops, restaurants and bars integrated into them at all. Daycare centres are bloody everywhere, apparently they are really big business, but there's no community pub anywhere round here. Contrast to the UK where pubs are just sorta interspersed with houses in a lot of places.
People say one of the reasons Perth has fewer pubs is because we don't have the pokies so can't support so many, but I think it's also because poor planning has made it a real effort to get to one.