Brisbane's Mathew Townsend has two degrees, a Masters degree in environmental management in sustainable development from the University of Queensland and a Bachelor of Environmental Science from James Cook University.
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He completed them in 2012 and 2016 respectively.
He is 25, well spoken, has completed a three-month internship with Telstra helping to deliver the National Broadband Network, and is what you could call quietly determined.
Mr Townsend has presented papers at three national conferences.
Kevan Carter, Telstra's senior risk and compliance specialist, remembers Mat favourably when he worked with Telstra between July and September 2015.
"He did an internship with us. I found him most helpful and I was able to give him work to do and off he would go and delivered it on time... I found him most helpful actually."
Mat Townsend cannot get a job - and he has applied for "thousands" of jobs.
It is more of a story because Mat is hearing impaired and has a slight case of autism.
He believes employers are discriminating against him because of his hearing disability.
"It's a social attitude," Mr Townsend said.
"It's a really negative attitude."
Mr Carter said working with someone with a hearing disability had not presented a communication problem.
"It just made you think. When I asked him to communicate with someone, I made it clear to the person that they had to speak clearly and succinctly and if they were in a room – allow him to read their lips."
Deaf Australia spokesman Kyle Miers – using an interpreter on the National Relay System - said discrimination was "sadly very common for people with a hearing disability."
He said while unemployment figures for Australians were not yet available, "in the United States it is in the high 70 per cent."
"I know of many who have obtained masters, doctorates and still can't hold a job simply because he or she is deaf," Mr Miers said.
"They apply for hundreds of jobs, but they only get in when they go in at entry level and work their way up.
"Their qualifications don't mean anything when they are deaf. It is a very sad, sad thing for many deaf people."
That is the very situation Mat Townsend said he faces every day.
He has applied for Brisbane City Council work and many private engineering companies offering environmental management jobs.
"And I have been rejected from every application," he said.
Employment agencies send him to undertake waiting classes and customer service type jobs.
Mr Townsend says he wants to be assessed on his qualifications, not on his disability.
"If you are hard-of-hearing an employer thinks that communication will be a problem," he said.
"But they don't think about the solutions around us, because we are capable of doing the work."
He said it was common for people with hearing disabilities using interpreters to provide captions to "read telephone conversations", which is provided free to employees. Emails also made working in offices easier.
"It's really a pretty general problem and without it being challenged it remains out in the community."
Kyle Miers said many employers simply did not know the National Relay Service could be used free of charge because it is funded by a levy paid by the major telecommunications carriers.
"Many employees are completely unaware of government schemes where they can provide financial assistance to provide interpreters, obtain equipment for workplaces so deaf people can communicate effectively."
