There's hard money here, as there are some tenured positions where you don't need to scrounge around all the time for grant money just to pay your salary for the full twelve months. (I've only heard this from some American academics and a friend who did part of his PhD lab work in the US, so I don't know for sure that it's like this - happy to be corrected.) So I think that allows at least some of the academics here a bit more security and hence they're a little less cut-throat in the fight for funding.
It's also true of postdocs here (scrounging for grant money to pay their salaries for another 12 months). There's virtually no job security. My current supervisor was lucky because he was offered an extended fellowship that lasts through to 2013, but he's the exception rather than the norm... and that's because he had an exceptional postdoc stint in the US and his publication record is incredible. Even so, he's not tenure-track, and won't be for at least a decade or so. My previous lab's postdoc wasn't even sure that he could stay for 2009 - his job is on a year-by-year basis.
It's the harsh reality that there are lots more graduating PhD students than there are postdoc positions in academia, and most postdocs don't make tenure. Also, the old fogeys refuse to retire, so tenured positions are scarce and with universities cutting funding to promote "cost effectiveness", hoping to gain tenure is like... hoping to win the $20million Tattslotto jackpot.
My analysis of the situation is that there was a lot of funding floating around in the US for research in the '90s because Clinton bumped up federal funding. This enabled a lot of people to set up their own labs. Unfortunately, this was not sustainable, and funding has plateaued since the early 2000s. The exponential increase in the number of research labs in the 90s created the competition, and many labs have since folded because funding has dried up.
There is a lot less funding in Australia compared to the US, so the situation has always been different. It's also well-known that postdocs in Australia are the most well-paid in the world (fresh postdoc salary approx. AU$70-80k p.a. compared to USD30-40k p.a. in the US), so this again attracts competition for postdoc places. The pressure to publish and remain competitive is thus maintained.
Of course, this is for sciences.
Azseroff, since you're a freshman you have a lot of time to talk to people in the industry. Ask around about funding, about how much money is available to study the stuff that you're interested in. I'd also suggest thinking about what you would do if you eventually went to grad school, got a PhD in sociology and couldn't find an academic job afterward. There are quite a few people in that position (if you substitute "sociology" with "social sciences" or "humanities").