The motion is seconded. You can't talk about headspace and its role without considering the impact of COVID-19 on young people. I speak for an electorate where we already had high levels of anxiety which are disproportionate to the average levels in Western Sydney. We have young people already in pain, and that was before bushfires. Now we have COVID.

Now we have youth unemployment unlike anything we have seen, and we are likely to see more. For those aged 15 to 25, unemployment rose 13.8 per cent in the last statistics, up from 11.5 per cent. The figure is more than double that of national unemployment, which was at 6.2. Those figures don't take into account the hundreds of thousands of people who've given up on looking for work and therefore aren't included in the unemployment figures. Of course, that's the case in the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury, where small businesses were ravaged by fire. Whether it was their business or their property, there were impacts that have led to fewer jobs in small businesses already prior to COVID. These new figures demonstrate that young people are disproportionately affected by COVID restrictions, with many working in sectors like hospitality and tourism, which have been completely shut down. That would be the economy of the Blue Mountains and some of the Hawkesbury.

The figures also come as young people are experiencing, even without all these things, working conditions that are so precarious that society seems to deem them a rite of passage, like insecure hours that simply don't cover living expenses. So they're finding themselves at or below the poverty line, and possibly in a debt trap. We know that job losses and financial hardship generally hit young casual workers hardest during an economic downturn, and that is certainly what we're seeing. According to the Grattan Institute, 15- to 19-year-olds are most likely to lose their job in the shutdowns of non-essential services, and 20- to 29-year-olds are in the category next most likely to be affected. Three of the six industries that have had reduced staff hours most due to COVID are hospitality, retail, and the arts and recreation. Again that expands the economic impact on places like the Blue Mountains. You're looking at a region that relies very heavily on international visitors, as do the mountainous sections of the Hawkesbury. While those international borders are closed, we know we can't recover. We can't return to normal until that happens.

For all those reasons, we can't talk about mental health without talking about the realities of unemployment. Countless young Australians are falling through the welfare cracks, and I've had many students contact me, like Laura from Springwood, who has fallen through the eligibility criteria for jobseeker and JobKeeper. Like Laura, young people are more likely to work casually so that they can maintain study commitments. More than one-quarter of these young workers have been with their current employer less than 12 months, which makes them ineligible for the federal government's JobKeeper payment. For Laura, it was even more galling. She'd just negotiated to move to part-time, but she just missed out on doing that. So this negatively impacts their financial situation and reduces their chances of being able to return to work soon. It also increases the risk of depression, anxiety, and suicide. That's where headspace will hopefully come in in the Blue Mountains.

When you add to all of these conditions the bushfires, you probably start to understand my eagerness to see the first headspace in my electorate open—now, hopefully, in July. Parramatta Mission, working with Wentworth Healthcare, will lead the establishment of it in Katoomba—a satellite site; not a full-service site. Even when I made the commitment of a full-service headspace for the Mountains over a year ago, I didn't imagine coronavirus and the social and economic impact that it would have, so I think we all need to be mindful that, given this is just a satellite headspace, demand may well outstrip supply in coming months and we need to watch that very closely. I appreciate that the headspace team, whom I've had very good discussions with, have worked closely with existing youth mental health and youth support services, but the links between mental health services, training and job opportunities will be more important than ever for our region. This headspace cou