OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott says the coalition will have more to say about the cost of its paid parental leave scheme ahead of the election, after a leaked forecast showed it could be $2 billion more than expected.
Costings from the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO), published in The Australian Financial Review, predict the package would cost $3.6 billion in 2014/15 and rise to $5.3 billion in 2016/17.
The costings are much higher than the $3.4 billion a year forecast by the coalition at the 2010 election.
Questioned about the PBO forecast on Wednesday, Mr Abbott would only say: "We'll have much more to say between now and polling day.
"This is a very important economic policy," he told reporters in Sydney.
"The wealth of a country depends on three things - population, participation and productivity - and our paid parental leave policy does good things for everything."
Mr Abbott has this week faced pressure from some of his own MPs to dump his "signature" scheme, which would give new mothers their regular wage for six months, up to $75,000.
The coalition says it will introduce a 1.5 per cent levy on more than 3000 top-earning companies to pay for the policy.
Responding to the PBO costings leak, shadow assistant treasurer Mathias Cormann dismissed suggestions the coalition had got its sums wrong.
"We ... released the costings in relation to the paid parental leave scheme in the lead-up to the last election, which was about three years ago," Senator Cormann told ABC radio.
"We will, of course, in the lead-up to the next election, release our full costings in relation to the paid parental leave scheme."
In a rare public statement, Parliamentary Budget Officer Phil Bowen said the figures published by Fairfax Media were not from costings prepared for the coalition.
"The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) has prepared a number of costings in this policy area for different parliamentarians," Mr Bowen said.
"The PBO will only confirm costings that have been publicly released by the political party or parliamentarian for whom the costing was prepared."
Mr Abbott was also asked to clarify his "women of calibre" comment, suggesting his paid leave scheme would encourage educated career women to have children, which reignited claims of misogyny against him.
"What I meant was that we have got to give a fair dinkum paid parental leave scheme to the families of Australia," Mr Abbott said of the comment.
"If it's right for the bloke on holiday to get paid at his real wage, if it is right for the bloke on sick leave to get to paid his real wage, why isn't it right for the woman on parental leave to get paid her real wage?"
Prime Minister Julia Gillard took aim at the Abbott parental leave scheme, saying it wasn't in keeping with the "Australian way" of providing a helping hand to those who need it most.
"Mr Abbott's scheme is the complete reverse of that," Ms Gillard told reporters in Brisbane.
"The more you have, the more you get, and that isn't how we provide assistance in Australia."
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