Tony Abbott's parental leave scheme is a bad idea that should have set off alarm bells within the Liberal Party, former federal treasurer Peter Costello says.
In a column in The Age newspaper on Wednesday, Mr Costello wrote that Mr Abbott was engaging in a policy 'race to the bottom' with Labor with his parental leave scheme.
Mr Abbott's proposal to give a parent six months leave on full pay up to $75,000 funded by a tax on the nation's top 3,000 companies, has already been widely criticised in business circles.
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Mr Costello wrote that Mr Abbott's claim his scheme was the world's most generous behind Sweden's "in itself should have set the alarm bells ringing".
"For Liberals, that alarm should have sounded like an air-raid siren once Bob Brown and the Greens lauded the scheme," he wrote.
He said Mr Abbott had taken a "Crocodile Dundee approach" to policy - a reference to a scene in the movie of the same name when Dundee was confronted by a mugger with a knife and produces a larger one, saying, 'That's not a knife, this is a knife'.
"And the point of Abbott's proposal is to tell the public that (Prime Minister Kevin) Rudd does not have a maternity leave scheme: 'This is a maternity leave scheme'," Mr Costello wrote.
"In this kind of politics, if your opponent has a bad idea you try to outflank it.
"Your opponent has a mildly bad idea so you come up with a more extreme one and have a race to the bottom.
"I have been to a lot of Liberal Party meetings in my life and I can honestly say I have never heard a speech in favour of higher tax.
"The idea of increasing tax would be as foreign to the Liberal Party as voluntary unionism at the local ALP branch."
