In Australia, not reading poetry is the national pastime.

The line is a wry, epigrammatic jab at cultural priorities: it frames indifference to poetry not as a private habit but as a shared civic recreation, implying that neglect of the arts can become normalized and even celebrated. The humor depends on inversion—“pastime” usually names a positive communal pleasure, but here it is the avoidance of a supposedly elevating activity. Read more broadly, it comments on the precarious place of poetry in mass culture and on how national stereotypes get built from attitudes toward “high” art. The exaggeration signals satire rather than a literal sociological claim.