Bicycle Network: Benchmarks

How active is the population?

Less than half the community are not getting the minimum level of physical activity needed to prevent disease.

We can look ahead and see a healthy society where bike riding is a normal part of everyday life.

Unfortunately at the moment this is not the case.

Half the community are not getting the minimum level of physical activity that you need in order to prevent disease.

Current best estimates are that only 46% of the population meet the minimum target.

(Over 7 million Australians aged 18-75 years (54%) did not undertake sufficient physical activity to obtain a health benefit. Over 2 million of these (15% of people aged 18-75 years) were sedentary, that is they did no physical activity in their leisure-time).

Our long term goal is to increase that proportion.

This is what we mean when we say we promote the health of the community through the prevention and control of disease by “More People Cycling More Often”’.

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

Australia's national agency for health and welfare statistics and information.

The National Health Survey

The National Health Survey is run by the ABS every three years. It allows those involved in health to set benchmarks, monitor trends and set priorities for interventions.

Lessons from the battle against smoking

Smoking is still the most important issue affecting our health.

Smoking levels in Australia have been as high as three quarters of the population.

After thirty years of concerted effort by many people and organisations in many ways, that rate is now down to around 20%.

The struggle to lift physical activity levels in the community is as important, urgent and necessary as the effort to reduce smoking rates.

Physical activity is now ranked second only to smoking as the most important issue affecting our health.

Inadequate physical activity accounted for 6.6% of all 'healthy' years of life lost in Australia in 2003, second after smoking (7.8%) and three times more damaging than alcohol (2.3%).

We can learn two things from the battle against smoking.

FIrst, it will take us – and others – many years to change the levels of physical activity in the community.

Second, we can win the battle.