Rejigged parental leave fails to fly
Tony Abbott's watering down of his signature paid parental leave scheme has failed to win over rebel backbenchers and the Greens.
Just a day after defending the generosity of his scheme, the Prime Minister said the income cut-off would be slashed from $150,000 to $100,000.
The change means the maximum a new mother would receive under the wage replacement scheme will be $50,000 for the 26 weeks she was on paid leave, down from $75,000.
But the shift will save little from the $5.5 billion annual cost because just 2 per cent of women of child-bearing age earned more than $100,000.
The scheme will be partly funded by a 1.5 per cent levy on 3200 companies with an annual turnover of more than $5 million, raising $4 billion.
Mr Abbott denied the threat of coalition senators crossing the floor to vote against the policy had forced him to break a major election promise and blamed the "Budget emergency".
"Obviously, I regret that we find ourselves in very difficult fiscal circumstances but under the circumstances where everyone is going to have to share in bearing the burden of fixing this particular problem I think it is reasonable," he said.
The backdown did not appease a small bloc of coalition senators committed to killing off the policy, with one saying it remained "flawed and unaffordable".
NSW Nationals senator John Williams said the move was a "step in the right direction" but the scheme was still too costly.
Greens leader Christine Milne said the scheme would need to be fully funded by big business.
