MELBOURNE - It's Saturday morning and the man of the house is perfecting his golf swing with the gusto of a PGA wildcard.

Inside, his other half has two loads of washing on the scoreboard and is casting an eagle eye over the soap scum building in the shower.

Sound familiar?

If you're a man who ducks outside when it's time to do the dishes, or a woman weighed down by wet washing, you are not alone.

The latest census confirms what most Australians already know. Men get it easy when it comes to housework - and it seems women let them get away with it.

Women do more than twice as much housework as men.

According to the 2006 census, released this week, the average Australian woman aged 15 and over does between five and 14 hours of domestic work a week.

Most men do less than five hours, and a quarter do none, despite the alleged henpecking.

Sisters, don't be fooled: the SNAG (sensitive new age guy) is a myth.

Men aged over 65 are more likely to help out around the house.

Add a few children to the equation - most of us have them, according to the census - but don't expect them to help out.

While the workload multiplies with extra mouths to feed, the number of willing hands does not.

Teenagers aged between 15-19 years admit they're a lazy bunch, with almost 40 per cent of males and about one in three females saying they shirked all chores in the week before the census on August 8 last year.

This puts more pressure on the average mum and wife, who is balancing family life, work and a mortgage.

That's the typical picture of the dinky-di Aussie, according to the census.

There are about 21 million of us and women outnumber men, with 97 blokes to every 100 sheilas.

The average Australian is 37 years old, married with two children and living in a four-bedroom house with two cars in the garage.

We're free of landlords, but the bank owns most of our bricks and mortar, and more of our income is being sucked away in mortgage repayments.

On average, Australians are chipping $1400 a month off the mortgage.

But there's a bit of spare cash to play with from the $1100 the household pulls in a week.

When mum and dad aren't squabbling over the housework, we're surfing the net and mighty pleased we upgraded to broadband. It saves precious time, which we can invest in volunteer work.