Hear me out. I have a plan that could save the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on many of the 1,600 call-outs each year to assist Aussies in trouble overseas.

No private schoolboy will ever need be arrested again in a foreign country for offensive conduct. Instead, on land reclaimed from Clive Palmer’s dinosaur theme park, Palmersaurus, adult children of the wealthy can be free to express themselves at Idiot Park.

Idiot Park, which could be located at Palmer’s Coolum resort in Queensland, would be a safe space for boys who have issues transitioning to manhood. There, our boys will be protected from foreign laws and media intrusion when they “let off steam” in the manner previously demonstrated abroad at sporting events, in public squares, at festivals, airports, temples, brothels, bars and nightclubs.

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They will be able to vomit, urinate, streak, moon, fight and flash without the need for “consular assistance” or in the case of some of the more well-connected clients – high-level minister-to-minister intervention.

The range of activities offered at Idiot Park would include stripping to your teeny-tiny bathers that displays a Malaysian flag (or the flag of any religious nation), running with bulls, giving “atomic wedgies”, throwing beer mugs, taunting ladyboys, stealing from street vendors , “accidentally” stealing bar mats and fondling flight attendants.

In Idiot Park, you won’t be arrested or publicly shamed, even if you do work for Christopher Pyne.

Nor will you have to deal with weird and frankly disorientating headlines – like this one the front page of the Australian on Wednesday: “Malaysian underwear arrests rock high-flying families.”

Instead your high-flying family can sleep comfortably at night, knowing that your underwear escapades will be published only on the Rich Kids of Instagram page.

As a special offer, when you graduate from a GPS or one of the exclusive all-male Sydney uni colleges, you get a season pass to Idiot Park.

Roving around the world with a band of mates – going from the World Cup to Grand Prix to running with the bulls to Oktoberfest has long been a rite of passage for Aussies with cash and freedom, but lately people haven’t found it so funny. Not even Julie Bishop is amused.

The line between larrikin, lout and legend is an interesting one to explore at this juncture in history.

We generally regard larrikins as good blokes (women are less likely to be described as larrikins) whose lineage can be traced back to convict days, where those who survived had to be resilient and tough.

When the Bulletin magazine first started in 1880, a sort of national character emerged from its pages and was celebrated: this was the “colourful” character, anti-authoritarian, self-sufficient, stoical, humorous and with a strong strain of anti-elitism. Think of CJ Dennis’s creation Ginger Mick in its pages – a “likeable rogue” and frequenter of slums and racetracks who was later killed at Gallipoli.

English author DH Lawrence in his novel Kangaroo wrote of the Bulletin: “It beat no solemn drums. It had no deadly earnestness. It was just stoical and spitefully humorous.” Just like the burgeoning ideal of the Australian man.

By then, Australia had an influx of Irish settlers who had anti-English anti-authoritarianism as part of their DNA. This attitude was fuelled by other nation-forging events such as the Eureka rebellion.

Later, the idea of the anti-authoritarian rebel became central in other great national myths, including the Anzac legend. In our short white history all of these traits converged on an ideal or archetype – the larrikin.

But when the larrikin goes abroad – all hell can break loose. The popular historian Peter FitzSimons has written about the rowdy behaviour of Anzac Diggers in Egypt during the first world war.

But what about now?

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Australia is one of the richest countries in the world. It is shameful that much of our “larrikin” behaviour takes place in some of the poorer places in the world (Dfat has singled out Thailand as a place where their consular services are frequently called upon). The behaviour of many drunken Aussies abroad is more boorish and Bullingdon Club than the Irish, anti-authoritarian streak as celebrated by the Bulletin. We’ve become a nation of brats, not rebels and legends.

The group of Australians arrested this week in Malaysia were mostly privately educated and had attended prestigious universities . There were cautioned and discharged on Thursday. Several of the men studied government and international relations overseas. They should have known better.

One of the nine, Timothy Yates, wrote in a recent Facebook post: “I have been privileged enough to grow up in international schools throughout high school years and what I treasure most is the ability to empathise and culturally understand those who surround me.”

Yates is the son of Australian diplomat Tom Yates, a former consul general in Tripoli, Libya. He is now the trade commissioner in Fukuoka, Japan.

Maybe instead of travelling the world, they should have gone to finishing school for blokes and had their holiday at Idiot Park.