From a public health perspective, it is the total amount that makes the difference. The amounts of beer consumed in Australia and Finland per capita are nearly equal. One thing to keep in mind is also the distribution of alcohol consumed in the population. From what I've heard (I have no stats at hand now), it's quite lopsided in Finland. Australians do drink a lot of wine while Finns drink more spirits respectively.

Finns as a group are far from being unique in not being very talkative. I visited Stockholm a couple of years ago and went to a few of pubs in hopes of finding people to talk to while drinking my beers. I did and I became Facebook friends with them but those two were the only ones among dozens and dozens of people I scanned looking for people wanting company. The entire Northern Europe is like Finland. Finland is nothing special in this regard. People prefer not to talk to strangers to Northern Europe. They don't talk other people on the train or the bus in London any more than they do in Tampere.