That's interesting, myself and 3 other mates were in vic at the start of december, when merging on to the highways we all found ourselves needing to force our way in as no one was leaving gaps, as we got closer to the city people seemed to let us change lanes etc more though.
2 of my "mates" (acquaintances) do security work at several clubs around Adelaide, occasionally I'll stand out the front/side/back/whatever with them for a while and talk crap however _none_ of the security seems to want to step in until a fight has broken out and they can throw some punches around, get painted a very different picture of todays "security" crowd when standing on their side of the fence.