Senator Michaelia Cash

I’d like to first put this on the record: the Liberal Party supports women.

Recently, Stephen Luntz from the Victorian Greens wrote that any problem with women belongs as much to the Coalition as it does to Opposition leader Tony Abbott, given women make up just 21% of Coalition parliamentarians.

White Ribbon Day, or the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, is marked on November 25 each year, in an effort to engage Australian men to help prevent violence against women.

It is an accepted fact that Australia has a productivity problem.

Last week, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency raised somewhat of a storm when it released its interpretation of data from Graduate Careers Australia, showing that the disparity between graduate salaries for women and men had more than doubled from $2000 to $5000 during 2012 and claiming that the gender pay gap across all industries was an average 9.

“Any bloke who hits women is not a man, he’s a coward.

This is the speech Senator the Hon Michaelia Cash delivered at the National Press Club yesterday.