A tumultuous seven years of paid parental leave (PPL) policy upheaval has ended in a whimper, with the Federal Government abandoning plans to make any changes to the existing scheme.

Key points: Changes to PPL dropped after Senate rejected current policy earlier this year

Changes to PPL dropped after Senate rejected current policy earlier this year Scheme been through numerous planned changes since Labor's original 2011 design

Scheme been through numerous planned changes since Labor's original 2011 design Minister says scheme can be improved, but savings must be found to pay for it.

Unannounced but loitering in the back pages of Tuesday night's budget was the Coalition's formal abandonment of its most recent PPL policy, which would have given some parents an extra two weeks of paid leave.

Social Services Minister Christian Porter said he was disappointed the Senate refused to pass the "fair and reasonable" changes and conceded the PPL was off the table.

"For the present, it doesn't seem like anyone is willing to countenance any form of savings in that system at all, so that leaves us with not a whole lot of room to manoeuvre," he said.

"It evidently won't be an immediate priority."

The PPL scheme was introduced by Labor in 2011 and offers new parents 18 weeks of leave paid at the minimum wage.

But before that policy came into effect, then-opposition leader Tony Abbott made one of his infamous "captain's picks" and surprised his colleagues by announcing a far more generous scheme that offered women six months' parental leave at their normal pay level, capped at $75,000 a year.

Even more surprising was that Mr Abbott proposed a 1.5 per cent levy on Australia's 3,000 largest companies to finance it, much to the annoyance of the business community.

The scheme itself — and the way it was announced — became a major source of contention within the party-room but the Coalition took the policy to both the 2010 and 2013 elections.

"Ten years ago, I had a different view on paid parental leave," Mr Abbott said. "But if we want families to have more kids, if we want women to have a fair dinkum choice to have a family, and maybe to extend the size of their family and to have a career, we need a policy like this. "That's why I have a convert's zeal on this."

But when the realities of government, a fractious senate and an increasingly unhappy party-room set in, prime minister Abbott's zeal began to wear off.

New prime minister, new policy

Fresh from his 2015 Summer break, Mr Abbott started the year by scraping the barnacles off his troubled government and his signature "Rolls Royce" PPL scheme was dispensed.

Five months later, then-treasurer Joe Hockey was in the Channel Nine studio for the traditional pre-budget interview with Laurie Oakes when he dropped a Mother's Day bombshell: a crack-down on "double dippers". This policy about-face was about as far from the "Rolls Royce" scheme as you could get.

"At the moment people can claim parental leave payments from both the government and their employers, they are effectively double-dipping," Mr Hockey said. "We are going to stop that. You can't double-dip. You can't get parental leave pay from your employer and from taxpayers."

The minister responsible for the new PPL scheme, then-social services minister Scott Morrison, added fuel to the fire when he said: "We are getting rid of what is an inequity and frankly in many cases I think is a rort."

The "double-dipping" policy and associated rhetoric went down badly and within months, Mr Abbott was rolled by Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister and Mr Hockey was off to Washington.

A ministerial reshuffle in late 2015 landed Mr Porter in the social services portfolio. He quickly ditched the phrase "double-dipping" and embarked upon another attempt at winding back the PPL scheme.

His PPL 3.0 plan was to prevent new parents accessing the full taxpayer entitlement if their employer also offered PPL, by offering to top up a person's leave to a maximum of 18 weeks. That was later extended to 20 weeks under a compromise deal with the Senate crossbench.

But it was not third time lucky. The Senate rejected the policy earlier this year and on Tuesday night, the budget killed off the plan altogether, just in time for Mother's Day 2017.