No quick fix for rural brain drain as Abbie leaves town

While the teen has been overwhelmed by love and admiration on social media, she was also subjected to intense and homophobic abuse offline.

Abbie was aged 12 when she set up the Rainbow Shoelace Project in her home town of Broken Hill, handing out free packs of rainbow beads for classmates to thread their shoelaces through.

The project drew international attention and recognition for Abbie, but the rising star has since become one of many young people leaving for a better future elsewhere in the "brain drain" phenomenon robbing rural towns of much-needed talent and people.

The beads were a way to support the LGBTQI community and signify to peers who may feel isolated, "I am safe".

"Why not make a small but big, creative and cute way to show people that they're loved?," Abbie told AAP.

The movement gained an international following with orders for resources coming from Canada, Mexico and the Czech Republic.

Messages of support have also flooded in for community-minded Abbie, who has also raised almost $25,000 for charity since the age of eight, and been recognised with a slew of awards.

Yet as her recognition grew for the shoelace project, so too did homophobic abuse and threats from peers.

Some two years since starting the project, Abbie has moved away - by force, she feels, because of the "small-mindedness" of some in her outback city.

"(The shoelace project has) given me the most amazing opportunities that I'll remember for the rest of my life but it's also given me some of (my worst experiences)," said Abbie.

"It's a country town.

"Everyone's got this fixed opinion of how a person should be and I don't fit into that construct."

Abbie and her mother believe her story exemplifies social attitudes driving "brain drain", where people with much to offer leave their communities for opportunities elsewhere.

The 14-year-old was recently named among the "Ones to Watch" for the NSW Women of the Year Awards.

The award category recognises up to 10 girls as the "next generation of rising stars" who are already supporting people around them.

Broken Hill City Council says brain drain is an issue it is grappling with because young people move away for education and upskilling.

The NSW outback city is about 40 nurses and 17 police officers short, and lacks rental properties to house them.

The council is in talks with the federal government on how they can accommodate the frontline workers, while Broken Hill Mayor Tom Kennedy is focused on building a local workforce fit for coming energy and mining projects.

He wants public schools to invest in subjects including physics, chemistry and maths, and for technical colleges to ensure they have a solid trades offering so young people do not need to travel to Dubbo.

"What you really need is, for starters, technical colleges to be back to what they were to make sure that trades are able to commence," Mr Kennedy told AAP.

"If we make sure that those things happen here, we're more likely to have people that take on apprenticeships (in Broken Hill) and then build those trades and skills in town."

TAFE in NSW has undergone mass job cuts under successive coalition governments in recent years, leading to a significant loss of resources in regional institutions.

University of Melbourne higher education professor Christopher Ziguras says brain drain becomes a problem when towns cannot attract critical workers like nurses and educators.

Bigger regional centres are fairly well-connected to governments but smaller communities have a tougher time, according to the professor.

He says initiatives such as migration policies, advertising campaigns and education incentives including regional university study hubs go some way to encouraging people to stay in the regions.

Farmer and former rural issues researcher Kate McBride moved from near Menindee, about 115km southeast of Broken Hill, to Adelaide and Canberra while working for think tank The Australia Institute.

She used her research role to shed light on inequity, including by exposing a five-year life expectancy gap between people living in the NSW far west and Sydney.

Ms McBride has since returned to the outback but had to give up her research role.

To her, brain drain concerns more than losing the "best and brightest" to big cities - it's about losing population and services in regional areas, making it harder for people to return.

Governments should focus on liveability in regional areas and prioritise health care, gaps in child care "deserts" and aged care, Ms McBride says.

"These are the kind of barriers that we need to be discussing," she said.

"(We also need) regional people at the table.

"To address issues in regional Australia, we need that regional perspective, and the silver bullet doesn't exist."

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This AAP article was made possible with the support of the Meta Australian News Fund and The Walkley Foundation.

Australian Associated Press