Sachin Joshi, the Liberal Party candidate for the seat of Paterson, has accused a Sydney metropolitan newspaper of "misrepresenting his position" on women in an article published last Wednesday.
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The article in the Sydney Morning Herald titled 'Women lack the 'business skills' to get a pay rise' quotes the Maitland-based GP business coach from a LinkedIn post last October, saying that "the main reason for the gender gap lies in the 'active interest (or lack of it) towards business skills/responsibilities'."
"This warrants further research into why women (doctors) are less active/interested in pursuing business skills? In my interaction with many female doctors, I have observed that they put lesser priority on understanding money matters, dealing with staff issues, managing commercial aspects and other business-related 'stuff'."
Mr Joshi responded on Facebook saying, on the contrary to the imputation made by the reporter, he had made it his profession to help women bridge the gender pay gap.
"I have worked within the medical community for many years and have advocated strongly in support of equal pay for women in medicine."
"Women have been shown to surpass their male counterparts in every area including clinical care, communication and collaboration, while taking equal or bigger share of family responsibilities at the same time.
"The recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald completely misrepresents my position.
"If elected to parliament I will work to ensure that all women have the same leadership and economic opportunities available to men in order to address the pay gap."
Repeated attempts by the Examiner to interview Mr Joshi have gone unanswered.
At the time of his pre-selection in April, Mr Joshi was described as someone who was "hoping to further serve the community who welcomed him more than eight years ago".
"We found the Australia we came here for and now is the time to give back to this wonderful community," he said. "One of my priorities is to protect Australians from Labor's proposed tax increases."