YEAR Nine Coffs Harbour High School student, Majella Goulstone, has given a speech in the Australian Children and Youth Parliament about employment prospects for youth.

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The speech ‘Employment and Education Pathways for Young Regional Australians’ was given on behalf of the Coffs Harbour Electorate.

Ms Goulstone’s speech called for change to help youth achieve better employment and educational outcomes in regional Australia.

“I chose the topic mainly because we do have the second worst employment rates in the country so that triggered it and also from hearing about experiences and talk between young people I feel that it’s one of the main issues affecting us.”

She believes if the system doesn’t change neither will the outcomes.

Part of her speech read, “I believe that if there were more support for young people to participate in extracurricular courses such as TAFE, they would be more educated in the areas which would make them worthy candidates for employment.

“I think that our modern society needs to partially reconstruct our employment system to give teenagers and young people opportunities to expand their knowledge and experiences in the workplace.

“If our status quo is the expectation for the future, we will see far too many young people unemployed, later entering the workforce with no experience or expectation of what is to come, and it needs to change.”

Ms Goulstone told News of The Area, “We need more encouragement towards support for employment from schools and for schools to really encourage students who are better for trades to do that and therefore become better candidates.

“Because that is where we end up, especially in Coffs there are alot of students that end up in Tafe who haven’t done too well.”

In total there were 91 students who participated and each electorate was represented by someone from year 7 to 10.

“It was really good to listen to everyone else from NSW and the issues that affected them.

“A lot of regional issues were about practicality and resources.

“This contrasted with the issues in the metropolitan areas of mental health, smoking, body image and social issues,” she said.

By Sandra MOON