Thank you very much, Peter, my many parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. When I was reflecting on what I might be saying this morning apart from the substance and the announcement, my colleague Rod Kemp, the Minister for Arts and Sport and some people have said to me that's the dream combination for a federal ministry. Rod said to me that just as twenty-four years ago the establishment of the Australian Institute of Sport represented an absolute watershed for the strength and the development of elite sport in Australia, so I hope that the launch of today's programme styled Building a Healthy, Active Australia will represent a watershed in the process of encouraging Australians, not only young Australians but Australians of all ages to indulge in more physical activity and to embrace a more healthy eating style and more healthy eating habits.
Australia is a paradox when it comes to physical activity. There is nothing binds us together as a nation quite like our love of sport. Yet we have alarmingly high levels of obesity with one in four young Australians under the age of 18 suffering from it with increasing incidence of children not engaging in any organised sporting or physical activity out of school, with declining numbers of schools offering sporting opportunities. So the paradox of that sport loving nation becoming increasingly less mobile and increasingly more obese is something that today's launch is designed to challenge. And under the title of Building a Healthy, Active Australia this is a programme which is designed to take on in a very frontal way the challenge of obesity within our community.
One of Australia's foremost experts on the challenges of childhood and of the need for early intervention in relation to children who might over time become for a combination of reasons socially deprived and therefore a challenge for our community, Dr Fiona Stanley from Western Australia remarked to me some months ago that the bad thing about obesity in Australia, well the bad news about is that it's a problem that's come upon this country fairly rapidly, that it wasn't such a big challenge 10 or 20 years ago. She said that's the bad news. She said the good news is that because it's happened in a fairly short space of time it's not perhaps as ingrained and as immovable as might be the case with something that has been the product of decades of bad habits and that is certainly an observation and a comparison that I hope turns out to be correct.
Today's programme that I launch involves an expenditure of $116 million over a period of four years. There are essentially four components to the programme. The first component of the programme is the provision of $90 million over four years to provide children with more opportunity for physical activity after school by linking approved outside school hours care services with sporting and community groups. The programme will be conducted under the auspices of the Australian Sports Commission and it will be available to all primary schools and to approved outside school hours care services and we project it will cover 150,000 children throughout Australia.
I want to acknowledge immediately the willingness of a number of major sporting bodies in Australia and I know they will be joined by others to assist in this programme. I was greatly encouraged several months ago when in Melbourne I met the Chief Executives of Cricket Australia, the Australian Football League and of Netball Australia and those three peak sporting bodies offered the support, the financial support as well as the participation of outstanding participants in their respective sports in this programme and I know that their enthusiasm is shared by other football codes which are stronger in other parts of Australia than Tasmania and Victoria and I know that once this programme is launched there'll be no shortage of people who will be willing to participate very, very strongly.
The second element in the programme is something I announced last week with Dr Brendan Nelson, the Federal Minister for Education and that is that as a condition of federal funding of schools and this is government schools, catholic schools and other independent schools there will be a requirement that those schools offer a minimum within their school curricula of two hours physical educational sporting activity each week. Now, many schools do that. Some don't. It might have been the norm thirty or forty years ago in government schools that happen and it certainly was if my experience in the government school system of New South Wales was any guide but it is no longer the case now and that is one of the changes that has contributed to the alarming challenge that we now face.
The third element of the programme is to provide $15 million for grants to community organisations such as Parents and Citizens or Parents and Friends groups to work with schools to encourage healthy eating, for example, through the development of healthy canteen menus and we have in mind small community grants of in order of $1500 or a few thousand dollars an organisation to encourage your local and P and C, your local organisation to develop healthy eating or healthy canteen menus. And these small community grants that can be made available to a large number of community organisations, the amount of money is not large, but the spread will be very extensive and that is what is important and it will encourage local community organisations to involve themselves very directly.
And the fourth element is the provision of $11 million for an information programme that will give parents, children and communities information and encouragement they need to not only adapt and adopt more healthy eating habits but also lifestyle changes that will produce better health outcomes over a longer period of time. I'm sure that all in this audience would agree with me that the people who have the primary responsibility for instilling habits of exercise, physical activity and good eating in their children are of course parents and if parents are not active no amount of government programming, no amount of Government information, no amount of fine examples from great sportsmen and women can encourage children to exercise and to eat properly. But governments can by their action and their leadership and by the policies they support, governments can reinforce the messages which are communicated by parents. And the aim of this programme is to bring about a cultural change in our community. I'm encouraged by the fact that over the past few months there has been more talk about the problem of obesity in Australia than at any time I can remember in the thirty years that I have been in public life and that is a good start. I mean, to actually get people talking about it and to get it communicated as a supported sanctioned idea and something to be striven for and a goal to be achieved through our media and through people talking about it. And to enlist the high profile sports men and women - the people like Robert de Castella and Mal Meninga and many others and I know others will come forward to involve themselves in this is first class.
Sportsmen and women are role models and if they take advantage of the example that they can be to the young of this country and they represent a good example through their behaviour and the things they say about the behaviour of our children in relation to such things as physical exercise they can make a very big impact. I do want to thank the contribution that Peter Bartels and the Australian Sports Commission and he and Mark Peters, the chief executive have worked very hard over recent weeks to put this initiative together and it will under their overall guidance and coordination that the programme will operate. But there are a number of other organisations that have contributed very generously to allow the Government to draw on the campaign materials that they have developed and I want to thank the Australian Fruit and Vegetable Coalition that has been working with the Western Australian Government and also I do want to thank the Australian Association of National Advertisers.
There's been a bit of a debate and I don't want to particularly labour it today because it does have a party political connotation and I would hope that the programme I'm launching today will have the total support of all political sources in Australia because I would have thought that the goals of this programme should be above party politics but there has been some discussion about the issue of advertising. I simply want to say that I am in favour of responsible advertising as I know the Australian Association of National Advertisers are in this area. I am a person who does believe in the concept of commercial freedom providing activity is sanctioned by the law and I do welcome the willingness of the Australian Association of National Advertisers to support and involve themselves and to be very enthusiastic about the campaign that we're launching today.
I just want to close by reminding you of two things - firstly, that this package I'm launching today builds on a number of other programmes that the Government has already initiated which are aiming to achieve the same goals and it includes for example what we call the Active Script Programme for doctors to write lifestyle prescriptions to encourage people to exercise rather than just taking pharmaceutical drugs and I can remember when this programme was launched several years ago there was some concerned expressed that in some way the Government was trying to prevent drugs being prescribed for people and to impose some rather arbitrary notions of improved lifestyle as a substitute for drugs, particularly in relation to people who have problems with cholesterol and the like.
But with the passage of time the wisdom of that programme and the commonsense of that direction we were trying to follow has been recognised. And we've also provided $9 million through the National Health and Medical Research Council for obesity related research and also under Medicare we've provided a new preventative health check for indigenous adults at a cost of $12 million over five years and there is of course a particular dietary problem amongst indigenous Australians and a particular emphasis. But ladies and gentlemen, I am really enthusiastic about the initiative that we're launching today. It's built on commonsense notions and my experience has been that if you base an appeal to the Australian people on commonsense it is always supported. It is in everybody's interest that we exercise more and not just the young, older people should continue or resume the habit of exercise because exercise is not only something that is good for people's overall health but it's also something that is good for mental wellbeing.
It is a fact as we all know that if you engage in physical activity it not only makes you feel healthier but it also improves the mental processes no end and I can't commend too strongly the benefits of regular exercise. I can't commend too strongly the desirability of instilling in the whole community but particularly the young because the habits develop when we are young stay with us forever. The habits of better eating, of combining a more active lifestyle with better eating habits and I believe that the programme that I've launched today will make a major contribution to it and it will involve the whole community. It will involve schools, it will involve sporting organisations, it will involve local P and C's, it will involve parents and it involve the support of the Government through the Australian Sports Commission and to all of those and particularly to my colleague Rod Kemp who's had ministerial responsibility for putting this programme together - I thank you very warmly and I commend the programme to all of the Australian people.