Big difference between qualifications and experience.
Private companies are looking for engineers that can actually do successful things.
You are highly likely to be interviewed by the company owner that is an engineer himself.
He is going to be far more impressed by a long string of prior successful projects he may know something about, and a frank discussion about his projects and the problems you may be expected to solve.
Just fronting up with a piece of paper in your hand from a school, may not cut it in his eyes.
The public service is totally different. You will be interviewed by some non technical office person from the HR department.
They are likely to be really impressed if you are from an ethnic minority, are woke, and look a bit odd.
A degree in gender studies, or political science, would be perfect for a non technical engineering supervisory position.
In larger companies, there are very few Engineers in management positions, the default being people with MBAs, who treat their Engineering & Technical staff like a "bloody nuisance"!
The choice of job applicants then devolves to the HR Dept, who haven't the slightest clue about most of the jobs they are interviewing people for.
Another thing is that, in the past, students who come to Australia to study subjects which for some reason or other were difficult to get into in their home countries, normally returned home & placed their new skills at the service of their homeland.
Rightly or wrongly, the perception is that graduates these days don't want to go home, & will try to find work in Australia.
Those that do fit this stereotype are in direct competion with those who have migrated in the usual way, & tend to colour perceptions of all "foreigners".
In my last job before retirement, when I wanted to leave, I was involved in interviews of my replacement.
I at least managed to prevent them from advertising for an "Engineer", as the job was really that of a "Technical Officer", but we were still besieged with applications from recent graduate EEs, almost all from the PRC, with really serious engineering qualifications, but not a clue about the core skills required for the job.
OK, given time, they would have learnt the "hands on" stuff, but time was not a common commodity!
In any case, it would be wasting the stuff they had learnt.
I think that in the PRC, EEs, particularly those working for the smaller enterprises survive on a "gig" basis, as the company we bought some of our most vital equipment from seemed to have "lost contact" with the EEs who designed the stuff, less than a year previously.
Sort of "rent an EE!".