Ummm i think someone forgot to tell Tony that......
He just keeps on rolling out the cheque book!
Hell he's even content to give Cadbury Chocolate company a $16 million sweetner in Tasmania. How generous can 'fair dinkum' Tony get?
"The paid parental leave costings to be released by Mr Hockey today will show the gross cost of the scheme in the first two years will be $9.8bn. But this is reduced to $6.1bn by abolishing the existing scheme offering new mothers 18 weeks at the minimum wage, which Labor legislated in 2010.
The PBO calculates that a further $1.2bn will be saved by replacing the existing generous commonwealth and state PPL schemes. Another $1.6bn will be saved from reduced payments of family and other benefits and the income tax collected on PPL payments. The levy of 1.5 per cent on company taxable income above $5 million will raise $4.4bn in the first two years. The levy is not eligible for franking credits and cannot be claimed by business as a tax deduction. The Coalition sought to neutralise the business backlash against the levy by offering a matching 1.5 per cent company tax. This will cost more than $5bn in the first two years.
While the costings will counter Mr Rudd's claims about the scheme, they could also fuel the Coalition's internal dissent over the size of the payments to new parents. The $9.8bn gross cost of the scheme over its first few years is far greater than the net cost of $6.1bn cited by Mr Abbott, highlighting the weight on the budget from the policy even with the savings and tax measures to pay for it.
Coalition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull acknowledged yesterday that the scheme was "very generous".
And Nationals MPs have privately damned the scheme because the benefits are skewed towards wealthier families in the cities, raising the prospect of a move against the reform if Mr Abbott becomes prime minister."
