AusDiab is a national, population-based study, which recruited over 11,000 adults from the general community in 1999/2000. Early publications described the prevalence of key conditions, including diabetes, obesity and chronic kidney disease, and the proportion of the diabetic population achieving treatment targets. Follow-up of the cohort after 5 years allowed descriptions of the incidence of diabetes and related conditions, as well as exploration of a range of novel risk factors for diabetes, and the development of the AUSDRISK score to identify people at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Assessment of fatal and non-fatal CVD outcomes confirmed the high risks for adverse outcomes associated with diabetes, and showed that two thirds of all people in the general population dying of CVD had diabetes or pre-diabetes five years earlier. A major area of investigation has been the role of sitting time which has been linked with diabetes risk, the metabolic syndrome and with mortality. Sub-studies have shown that, independent of total sitting time, the frequency with which sitting time is broken up is associated with metabolic function. AusDiab has reported on the costs of diabetes and obesity, and has allowed modelling of diabetes prevention interventions, which show that even combinations of interventions are unlikely to lead to reductions in the prevalence of diabetes in the next 15 years.