Why doesn't Australia have a big nightlife culture?

Visiting Sydney for the first time in a while, and the first two nights out I had were very meh. I'm from the UK, but my dad grew up here and would always reminisce about the "glory days" of the early 2000s nightlife before the lockdown laws were implemented. Now the laws are gone, but I still haven't really seen that much change in nightlife since the last time I was here. Granted, cost of living pressures are burdening (almost) everyone and public transport after midnight is pretty bad. But I would think that something had changed in the time I was gone. Its probably an economic problem right now but it also seems like a cultural one with Australia's whole early riser attitude.

Every other city in the country bar Melbourne are below average when it comes to nightlife. Brisbane, Gold Coast, and even Darwin are not as sluggish but Sydney, Perth, and Adelaide are another tier below. I can understand Canberra and Hobart, but the lack of night time vibrancy in our major cities makes no sense. We have the perfect climate and beach environment to compliment a nightlife, just look at Brazil, Argentina, Spain, etc. Hell, even places like Tokyo and Seoul have some great nightlife and people always shit on those places for being workaholic central. It just doesn't make sense to me on why we insist on closing pubs in a beach city at 11 and having the CBD empty by 12.

Sorry for the rant-like post to start the day, just frustrated from a pretty bad night out.