They are the cash-rich, time-poor power couples, aged 35 to 45, with kids, both working full-time and with six-figure salaries - but not enough time to enjoy them.

"You can tell you're a NETTEL household because after dinner you both get out your iPhone and coordinate the next day's activities," Mr Salt said.

"And if you email your schedules to your nanny, then you're an uber-NETTEL."

Mr Salt, a partner with KPMG, is the master of the acronym - summing up different kinds of people in Australian society with a pithy, nails-it-on-the-head description.

"You can't be in the business of demographics and not have the cool acronyms," he said in a lunchtime address today to the ACT branch of the Property Council of Australia.

His more recent efforts have included PUMCINs - Professional Urban Middle Class in Nice Suburbs.

"I suspect everyone here is a bit of a PUMCIN," he said to some of Canberra's movers and shakers in the property world during the address at the Hotel Realm.

"You can tell PUMCIN men on the weekend - they wear polo shirts, chinos and boat shoes.

"And you tell a PUMCIN household because there's goat's cheese in the fridge. I have this theory that households who eat goat's cheese do not eat McDonalds - they are mutually repellent."

Salt maintains cities can be divided not only along ethnic but tribal lines.

"I think just outside the CBD, maybe two to three kilometres from Canberra or five to six kilometres from the centre of Sydney and Melbourne, there is such a thing as the goat's cheese curtain. You're either inside or outside the goat's cheese curtain," he said.

And as for those NETTELs? They are right at home south of Lake Burley Griffin.

Mr Salt said the highest concentration of NETTELs in Australia were in Curtin and then Forrest.

"Basically these are places close to the CBD, close to the Parliamentary Triangle, with people gearing their lives around their work," he said,

"I think the reason Canberra is the hotspot rather than Sydney or Melbourne is that in Sydney or Melbourne the male is more like to be a full-time worker and the woman is more likely to be a part-time worker.

"In Canberra, you're more likely to have two parents working full-time, fairly senior in government departments and both working flat out with not enough time to enjoy life."

The equivalent suburb in Melbourne was Albert Park and in Sydney, Paddington.

And there were other tribes to keep an eye on.

Reflecting the trend for 20-something children to stay longer in the family home, Mr Salt has come up with KIPPERS - Kids in Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings.

And perhaps a nod to the cashed-up bogan, Mr Salt said his personal favourite acronym was the not statistically-proven-but-still fun LOMBARD - Lots of Money But a Real Dickhead.

"You don't find that in the Census," he said.

While Mr Salt got the laughs with his acronyms, he also had a serious message about the future of Canberra for its development sector.

He said the Chinese and Indian populations were the fastest-growing tribes in Canberra, the real challenge in the future would be providing affordable housing for the "entitled" Generation Y as they moved out of their parents' house and there was a question over the sector continuing to build separate houses on separate blocks when couples and singles were the fastest-growing households.