I know with absolute certainty that only three days into 2003, about 95 per cent of you will already have broken your New Year resolution.

That's the one about eating and drinking less, exercising more and losing weight.

Do not be downhearted. You are in good company. The message from Oz is a comforting one for chubbies everywhere. Australia is getting fat.

Australia, the land of the super-fit athletes, the bronzed and beautiful, the home of some of the healthiest people on the planet is suffering from an epidemic of obesity. It is now officially the second fattest nation in the world after America.

The government, doctors and various health agencies are pressing the panic buttons as the costs of dealing with the epidemic have reached half a billion pounds a year - and continue rising. And Australia's population is much less than half the size of Britain's.

So what is going wrong in this country blessed with such an abundance of wonderful fresh food, delicious wines and where the cost of living is about a third of Britain's?

It seems to be a sadly familiar story. Most experts here agree it started about 20 years ago, coinciding with the proliferation of fast foods, a dramatic increase in the use of cars and far too many Aussies preferring to watch sport on television with a can of beer in their hands, rather than doing it themselves.

Sound familiar? I detect a certain amount of hysteria in both government and medical circles in their responses to what they are now describing as Australia's most pressing community health problem.

For instance, health minister Kay Patterson has called on all unhealthy Australians to make a New Year resolution to visit their doctor to get a 'lifestyle prescription'. Well, we know all about new year resolutions, don't we?

This wondrous lifestyle document, promising to make Australia slim and healthy again, is being concocted by a government agency called the National Prescribing Service. It will apparently be full of well-meaning advice about long-term exercise and nutrition.

But one of the country's leading dieticians, Rosemary Stanton, wants to get much tougher and really start cracking the whip.

She actually wants government legislation to protect people from themselves.

While she may not be proposing to put fat people in public stocks, she wants special taxes on junk foods and bans on some kinds of food advertisements for children.

It all goes to show how much trouble you can get into when you start making New Year resolutions.

Mine is a simple one - not to make any.