Ms THEOPHANOUS (Northcote): My question is to the Minister for Youth. I ask: what is the Andrews government doing to ensure that creating opportunities for young people in Victoria is a focus of our pandemic recovery? Our young people have shown incredible resilience throughout this shocking year, adapting to remote learning, being separated from their friends and in many cases their family, not being able to play the sports they love and putting on hold plans for travel, training or work, and we know that young people are amongst the hardest hit by this pandemic. They are the most likely to have insecure jobs, to find it hard getting into the workforce, to be renting. They have been really brave, but many feel deeply uncertain about the future. In Northcote one in five people is aged between 15 and 29. I will soon be setting up a youth advisory council to hear directly from them about their hopes and ideas. I want to ensure we are doing everything we can to give them a leg up in these challenging times.
