Election 2022: Josh Frydenberg and Monique Ryan in fiery Kooyong election debate

The teal independent trying to unseat Treasurer Josh Frydenberg in his inner Melbourne electorate says it’s a “no-brainer” for women to be paid super for government-funded maternity leave.

Dr Monique Ryan also slammed the Coalition for “macho breast beating belligerence” with China during a highly-anticipated debate on Sky News on Thursday between the pair over the traditionally blue ribbon seat of Kooyong.

Climate 200 backed Dr Ryan, who is trained as a paediatric neurologist, said the gender pay gap was significant and there was a reason women aged 50 and older were most rapidly growing group at risk of homelessness.

“So the first thing, which for me is an absolute no-brainer, is that women should receive superannuation appended to their maternity leave,” she said after being asked about the issue.

“There’s no question about that and I think that other family-based breaks from the workplace should also receive superannuation in the same way to try and remediate some of the disparity in our earnings at the end of our working careers.”

The Liberal Party have knocked back making superannuation a part of paid parental leave, while Labor has yet to make a decision so close to the election, despite campaigning for it back in 2019.

“We support paid parental leave. We can’t commit to everything that we committed to during the last campaign,” Mr Albanese said, in a not-very-promising sign when asked about it on Thursday.

Mr Frydenberg pointed to a change the Coalition had put in place which means women earning less than $450 month now receive super, whereas previously they had not.

He also highlighted how the government introduced changes to increase the transparency of superannuation fees and returns, which are now available to look up on a website.

During the debate, Dr Ryan also slammed the way the government had handled Australia’s relationship with China, saying that it had to be treated with “respect and sensitivity”.

“China is our biggest trade partner and the relationship with our biggest trade partner should be treated with respect and sensitivity, not with macho breast beating belligerence,” she said.

“We’ve seen how much that has cost us and it’s been actively unhelpful to weaponise our relationship with China for really local domestic political aims.”

Dr Ryan said she also felt it was unhelpful to the 11 per cent of the Kooyong electorate who were Chinese-Australians.

She said one of these people at a local shopping centre had told her she had felt unsafe in her own country over the last six months, having lived in Australia for 40 years.

“That brings shame on all of us,” she said.

Dr Ryan said she did agree more needed to be done to work on domestic security.

“By shoring up onshore production of things like iron ore and our local refinement of our own iron ore using green energy,” she said.

She then pointed to former Australian Defence Force Chief Admiral Chris Barrie talking about the risks of climate change.

“(He) said the biggest threat to us at this point in time as a country, biggest security threat is our inaction on climate change,” she said.

But Mr Frydenberg said local Chinese-Australians in Kooyong understood the government’s issue was not with them.

“The government’s issue is with China’s more assertive behaviour,” he said.

“Now China under Xi Jinping has changed diplomatically, economically, politically, and militarily.

“And the developments in the Solomon Islands should concern us.”

He also pointed to the situation with the South China Sea, the treatment of the people in Hong Kong and the human rights abuses against Uyghurs.

He challenged Dr Ryan to have a look at the list of demands the Chinese Embassy in Australia had put on the government.

“I’m sure you could not agree with them,” he said.

“They did not want Australian parliamentarians to speak their mind on China. They do not want us to speak out about human rights abuses on China.”