Parents should be encouraged to read to their children, and teachers should be equipped with all available techniques for teaching literacy, so the varying needs and capacities of individual kids can be taken into account.

Some researchers sensibly suggest that rather than worrying too much about which programs our children are watching, we should concentrate on trying to reduce the total amount of time they spend in front of the screen.

A strangely reflective, even melancholy day. Is that because, unlike our cousins in the northern hemisphere, Easter is not associated with the energy and vitality of spring but with the more subdued spirit of autumn.

Obviously, every child should be given the best possible opportunity to acquire literacy skills.

Still, most of those effects occur in the context of harmless play and it is patently obvious that children are not normally turned into aggressive little monsters by TV or video games, since most children do not become aggressive little monsters.

The yearning for strong leadership is more about strength of purpose - clarity of vision - than about merely 'getting tough'.

On average, Australians watch more than three hours of television a day, compared with 12 minutes a day spent by the average couple talking to each other.