I have an idea - but I need your help

What seems like a very long time ago, I came to Australia as a backpacker. The experience helped carve out the person I am today. Independent, socially capable, streetwise and always looking for an opportunity.?

I feel for the younger generation who cannot travel overseas right now. But when I think about it, I left the UK to come to Australia, because it is magical here. This country is truly incredible and I think that often when we live in a place we take it for granted. I have not travelled as much around the UK as I have here, it's just what happens.?

However, in Australia we have a few problems right now. Being able to travel is one of them. This impacts the global and local tourism industry.?

1. We are suffering from not having those backpackers come to Australia to create the fruit picking clusters.?
2. Our tertiary education sector is in dire straits because we no longer have international students taking up the places at Universities or TAFE.?
3. We also have a planet that needs some attention right now, we need to be more sustainable, we need to educate ourselves and others and actually put into practice some of the fixes and it needs to happen now not once a roadmap has been discussed for another 2 years.?
4. We cannot travel overseas which means that our younger Aussies who would otherwise be exploring a new place and working out who they are cannot experience this luxury.?

What if we put all of our problems into one boiling pot and created a simple solution.?

We want tourism to come back to our centres and our rural areas

We want fruit pickers to help us manage our supply chain to fulfill orders and ensure our crop is not spoiled

We want places at University and TAFE to be filled with students

We want to have a more Sustainable Australia but we need some key people to be educated enough to action these tasks.

The Government is doing a lot to try and help everyone, but what if we asked for funding to support a different kind of program that allowed us to help ourselves?

What if we created an ecosystem of travelling, studying, working younger Australians who tapped into the education sector to study things like Eco Tourism, Sustainability, Supply Chain, Agriculture, Conservation and land management.?

What if part of these courses meant that there was a mandatory 6 month work placement to be done in rural Australia where companies can post jobs and these students who are going for specific qualifications can apply? That solves the problem of a fruit picking workforce, it fills Student numbers up in tertiary educational establishments, it also brings people and money back to Rural Australia and gets our young Australians to explore this beautiful land I now call home - because it is amazing and relatively unexplored.? What if the UNiversities worked together instead of in competition to create fluid and relocatable courses that can be studied online or face to face at any Uni/ TAFE in the country.?

So how can we make Australia more sustainable and community oriented with this solution?

Along the way they fill in a Sustainability passport so they have to do some ocean clean up, land care, plant trees, pick up rubbish, help out with our native people and get involved in their cultural practices.?

We could create a unified and cohesive Australia and our young year 12’ers who don’t really know what to do with themselves could be backed by the Government to travel, work & study. Imagine if these kids then stayed and lived the rest of their lives in Australia doing what they love to a standard we need. We would be self-sufficient, sustainable and smart.?

It’s an idea but one that might have legs if the right people read this - so share this and see what kind of conversation it can start.?