Professor Rob Moodie was in Canberra yesterday to meet sports groups, urban planners, nurses, doctors, dietitians and others with a stake in preventing disease and promoting health. ''We basically want to test out our ideas ... around trying to get Australia being the healthiest country by 2020,'' he said.

Two common themes had emerged from the meeting, he said.

''You really do need to redesign your local neighbourhoods so they encourage people to be active. You need to promote public transport and cycling and walking.''

Schools and workplaces were the ideal places to promote health, he said. ''We need to do more than just say it. We need to equip schools and workplaces to do that.

''Someone suggested there should be four Rs reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic and recreation.''

The second theme was to support local communities in developing their own programs to tackle problems such as binge drinking, poor nutrition and physical inactivity.

''We need to have, a bit like the Keep Australia Beautiful campaign, ... lots of local activity generated as well,'' he said. Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon appointed the taskforce to develop a strategy by June 2009 for easing the burden of chronic disease caused by obesity, tobacco and alcohol.

She announced yesterday that 19 organisations would share $3.6million in the first round of federal grants to tackle binge drinking. One of the successful applicants was Assisting Drug Dependents Inc., which secured $243,300 for its ''party-safe binge drinking project'' for young people living in the Canberra region.

''We in the Rudd Government do understand that binge drinking is a problem,'' Ms Roxon said.''We know not only does it hurt our society, it hurts the economy as well.''

Ms Roxon said she believed the community would also benefit from national rules on the responsible service of alcohol and lockouts for customers who arrived at pubs after a certain time. At some pubs and clubs in NSW, that time is 2am.