The Australian of the Year Award recognises Australians who have made significant contributions and created positive change.

For over 212 years, Australia Post has been at the heart of Australian communities, connecting them with each other and the world. Beyond parcels, letters and services we're also connecting people through stories of hope, resilience and community service. We’re thrilled to recognise the incredible Australian of the Year Award state and territory recipients who make such a profound contribution to their communities and the nation.

We’re proud to support these awards and to share these inspiring stories with you and we’d like to take this opportunity to congratulate the state and territory award recipients. In this Australian of the year series, we had the opportunity to be in conversation with each of the state and territory award recipients.

In this episode of Ready to Retail, we continue our ‘In Conversation’ series with all the recipients of the Australian of the Year state and territory awards. We have the pleasure of speaking with Craig Leeson in this episode, winner of the 2022 Tasmanian, Australian of the Year.

Craig is an award-winning filmmaker, journalist, television presenter and entrepreneur. He is the CEO of Leeson Media International and Ocean Vista Films and founder of the I Shot Hong Kong Film Festival.

In 2017, Craig released his first feature-length documentary, A Plastic Ocean. Viewed around the world and ranked the number one documentary on iTunes in the US, the UK and Canada, it helped launch global impetus for change to save our oceans from plastic pollution.

Craig’s latest film, The Last Glaciers, released on IMAX in March this year. Four years ago, Craig began researching a new documentary on para-alpinism, an extreme sport where mountain climbers scale summits and paraglide off their peaks. He planned to film at the French Alps during winter but arrived to find little ice and no snow. We took this opportunity to talk to craig about his research and plans to film in the French Alps and how this quickly morphed into spreading awareness that climate change, single use plastics and biodiversity loss are already affecting every single one of us.

Australia Post is category sponsor of the Australian of the Year Award and We’re proud to partner with the National Australia Day Council and showcase the inspiring stories of remarkable everyday Australians.

As always, we would love to hear from you. If you have any comments, questions, suggestions or queries, please feel free to contact our team by emailing them on: retailacademy@auspost.com.au