Fatima Payman (WA, Australia's Voice) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to continue my remarks. For those who aren't able to correct this course, the consequences are devastating. Analysis by ACOS found that, if you spend a year out of paid work, you almost halve your chances of ever getting back into employment. It's fair enough that some will be working part time for various reasons, but there is still a shocking amount of unemployment and underemployment for young people. The national unemployment rate was 4.1 per cent in January, but the youth unemployment rate was more than double that at 9.6 per cent. Youth underemployment stood at 14.8 per cent. The young people who go to university did what they were told to do: 'Go to uni, study hard, and you'll be rewarded for that hard work.' The promise that was made to them was not kept. For those young people who somehow managed to get a job and fend off AI, what they learned at uni will often be hopelessly misaligned with the work they're actually doing.

According to 2023 statistics from the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, around 40 per cent of undergraduates felt that their skills were not fully utilised in their job. This was as high as 47 per cent for women who completed STEM degrees. Obviously, this is a very tricky problem. There will not be a silver bullet for this. To figure out how we will address the problem, we really must look at it from every angle possible. We need to look at the job market for young graduates. We need to look at the skills they are being sent out into the world with compared with the skills the world wants them to have. If other countries have developed ways of addressing graduate underemployment or graduate unemployment, we need to look into them.

Most importantly, we need to understand—and our government needs to understand—what is really at stake here. In 2024, suicide was the leading cause of death for Australians aged between 15 and 44. Employment that is meaningful and purposeful is a huge part of improving the mental health of young people. When you don't have meaningful employment, when you're instead forced to endure the humiliation ritual of modern jobseeking, it weighs on your mental health. For the sake of our young people, I would urge my colleagues in this place to support this motion.

Question agreed to.