(generated from captions) P The Federal Budget is next Tuesday. No surprise the daily elections are under way. Today Climate Change Minister Greg Combet confirmed that Labor's $1.4 billion in tax cuts will be dumped thanks to that big fall in the European carbon price. Coalition policy is also under scrutiny with questions over the funding of its paid parental leave scheme. To be paid for by tax increases for over 3000 of Australia's biggest businesses. I spoke to shadow Finance Minister Andrew Robb earlier. Andrew Robb, thanks for joining us there.S' my pleasure. Thanks.This latest rate cut, from the coalition's point of view, is it all about the dollar or is it a signal that the Australian economy is indeed weaker? I think what it does signal very clearly is that there is a severe crisis of confidence. Consumers are not spending. Many businesses are not investing.What's the coalition government, a Coalition Government, going to do about a high Australian dollar should it win? The best thing we can do about the high dollar is to cut costs for business, to remove unnecessary regulation, and there is a really serious task to be undertaken there. We've got to make businesses large and small across Australia more competitive so that they can deal with the high dollar.Let me go to one policy that the coalition has put down which will actually lead to increased costs for some businesses at least 3,200 businesses. That's your parent parental leave policy. I notice in the Financial Review today they're quoting a Parliamentary Budget Office costings of $14 billion in the first three years and the Australian institute saying actually, company tax would have to go up from 30 to 33, so up 3%, not 1.5%, just to get the sort of costings of 3. 4 billion a year that you're talking about now because the costings haven't taken into account the franking credits. How are you going to fund this? As I understand it, the Parliamentary Budget Office today, firstly, have said that that's not a costing that they've done for the coalition. Who knows what assumptions someone asked the Parliamentary Budget Office to assess in terms of our policy.Are you suggesting that the parliamentary budget office is not a credible body from that point of view? No, not at all. What I'm saying is they would test - they would calculate based on the assumptions that either the Government or someone else has asked them to make a calculation in regard to. They don't know. Government doesn't know in the end the details which all will be released in full detail before, well before the election.The details are what are concerning a lot in business. Who are these 3000 or so companies? We've got stories now coming out that major law firms, for example, would be beneficiaries but they wouldn't be funning it because they're structured as trusts. We've got companies which potentially could be caught in funding this but actually are paying their employees far less than the $150,000 a year where women or carers would benefit. There's a big fairness issue here, isn't there? Bear in mind, there are 2.4 million businesses in Australia. This would apply, cost of this would apply to the top 3000. There is, therefore, 2.3 97 -Not all companies are structured as trusts, for example.The thing is the final details will be fully explained but also this is going to be of enormous benefit to small businesses and medium sized businesses, hundreds of thousands, millions of them, across the country, and finally, look, it is a 21st century policy. This is not intended in any way, unlike the Government's scheme, to be a welfare mesh yearAndrew Robb, you are area saying that this is not middle class welfare, this is an important social reform.Economic reform in fact.Economic reform.Economic reform.The fact that you've got this threshold at $150,000 makes it extremely high and there are members of your own party who have come out philosophically concern about this? Are you 100% behind Tony Abbott on this? I am indeed. That 150,000 of course is only about 1.5% I think of women who are in that higher category. This is a six month provision which we believe will encourage a lot more women to go into the workforce. If you look at the Grattan research and the research of others, the two most important productivity improvements we can implement as a Government if we get that privilege is to get more seniors to stay in the workforce and to get more women to go into or stay in the workforce.This is a time when Greg Combet is announcing pullbacks on the carbon tax and indeed when the Labor Government are having to pull pack on their family benefit commitments. This would be a time presumably politically where you could dump this policy and probably get away with it? Again, so much of Labor's mismanagement and the chaos in their budgetary figures is for spending which has been misplaced, it's been unfunded, misplaced, not productivity related spending.Do you get many point for bulling in the Carlos Beltron with those two issues.No. They're being forced into the situation they're in now. This Government is a slippery slope. They're in chaos. They're dysfunctional. That's why we're seeing all these decisions at the last-minute. If you couldn't trust last year's budget which is falling apart in the last two weeks before this year's budget, how you can trust this year's budget? You mentioned several times the coalition's commitment to return to a surplus. There are a lot in business that I hear from who wonder whether Tony Abbott is the man to make those sorts of tough decisions. Do you think he's got that leadership quality? I do indeed. We will stick to a set of principles. That paid parental leave is fully funded. On top of that we have to make a lot of hard decisions about spending. Already you've seen a raft of things that have been announced which are not politically easy. The school kids bonus which is a cash splash paid out of borrowed money, we've nounsed that. We have he's taken a political hit out of that. There's kasht tax, the mining tax removal. All of these things what we're doing with the NBN -The NBN is off the budget. There's a lot of big black holes in the billions which you haven't really accounted for yet? The thing is that the NBN might be off the budget as far as the current accounts is concerned but on our capital account it is part of that debt that's sitting out there and starting the growth in debt under this Government has been faster than at any other time in our history.Six days out from the budget, Andrew Robb I appreciate you coming on talking to us.My pleasure.You can see an extended version of that interview with Andrew Robb