Over the past year, she's handed in hundreds of resumes for a range of positions and followed most of them with a call to the business. She completed a certificate four and a diploma to upskill, she regularly volunteers with different organisations to get more experience but still - nothing. This is a woman who so desperately wants work that she reached out to my office to help her find it.

Unsurprisingly to some, this situation is all too familiar.

Last week the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed that once again, underemployment in Australia has risen. At a national unemployment rate of 5.2 percent, there are 704,700 Australians unemployed, and more than one million are underemployed. Perhaps most concerning, the youth unemployment rate is double the national average, with more than 250,000 young people looking for work.

In the electorate of Paterson - which covers the Kurri Kurri, Maitland and Port Stephens areas - those numbers are worse. In the last year, unemployment in the Cessnock, Maitland and Port Stephens local government areas (LGA) increased. Cessnock LGA now has an unemployment rate of 7.4 percent, Maitland LGA is up to 4.8 percent and Port Stephens LGA is at 5.5 percent. When it comes to individual suburbs, that number reaches up to almost 12 percent unemployment.

When there are parts of the electorate that are more than double the national unemployment rate, this issue becomes a crisis.

Unlike the Labor Party, the Liberals didn't release one policy throughout the election that will address the increasing and alarming unemployment statistics. Coming into our first week of Parliament post-election, there is still no indication of what they plan to do - if anything.

Instead, the government is discussing what dodgy deals they need to make with cross-benchers such as Pauline Hanson so she will vote for their proposal to give large corporations tax cuts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The economy isn't working for regional Australians - everything is going up except for people's wages. Youth unemployment is more than double the national unemployment rate and a record number of Australians are working two jobs to make ends meet. On top of this we have an increased cost of living, slow wage growth, and slowing down of the economy.

We cannot give the biggest relief to the most profitable businesses in Australia and hope that will lead to the creation of more jobs and higher wages. Trickle-down economics does not work.

When Parliament resumes in July, I will stand up for our region and the people who need our help the most. The Labor Party will continue to hold this government to account because regional areas like ours depend on it.