Others may nominate camping or golfing or quality time with their families. But it is hard to see why anyone would pick paid parental leave policy as their summer fun. As far as holiday activities go, it is the equivalent of spending the break doing a backlog of tax returns from 1985 and mowing your lawn with nail scissors.

And yet, this just what Tony Abbott has said he intends to do. As he announced this week, "my ministers and I will be working on this over the summer break so that we have something in the first half of the year to bring forward".

There is nothing surprising about the concept of fixing the PPL, of course. It is famously "friendless within cabinet" and without pals in the Senate, too. Those inside and out of the government say the $5.5 billion plan is too expensive, while advocates for women's advancement and family sustainability say the money would be better put into childcare instead.

But even though there was a Calipo's chance in hell of paid parental leave ever passing the Senate in its current form, fixing it is not going to be straightforward.

For starters, the government so far does not appear to have any clear ideas about where it will take it. When Abbott announced the revamp last weekend, he said he would not go into "specifics". The only detail we got was that it would be "better targeted" in what can only be seen as code for means testing.

On Sunday, Liberal MPs texted each other totally confused about what the announcement meant. As one backbencher observed later in the week, "what is our policy these days?"

In the vacuum of not knowing where things will go, there are is still plenty of critical concern. And that's just within the Coalition. Some are unhappy that the scheme will still be paid for by a levy of big business. Others, like Liberal senator Zed Seselja are keen to ensure that stay at home mothers are not ignored. The ACT senator notes Abbott's argument that PPL is a "workplace entitlement" falls over if he starts blocking access to wealthier mothers. Then it becomes a form of welfare, so then, what about the mothers that don't work?

Others again within the Coalition argue that if you want to really fix up women's workforce participation, you have to fix tax rates. As the Productivity Commission's draft report into childcare noted, the drop off in family tax benefits once a young families income rises (after the primary care giver goes back to work) plus increases in income tax and reduced childcare assistance "can result in an effective marginal tax rate of close to 100 per cent".

To add to the policy pina colada, Abbott has set himself the task of coming up with a complementary childcare policy, which will wrap up and be tied together in a neat little bow as a "holistic families package". We are not just talking billions of dollars here, but all kinds of regulations, laws, child safety and state issues. It's worth pointing out that the Productivity Commission took more than 900 pages to issue some draft thoughts on how to reform the system.

On top of this, Abbott has to tango with the fact that he went to two elections with a policy that he is now changing. The original policy may not have been popular, but it was still his signature number for years. He can blame the Senate all he likes, but in the end, it's his autograph on the moribund scheme.

The key to summer project success will be negotiation – something the government hasn't exactly excelled at so far. It is not encouraging that Abbott has begun the process by annoying the Greens, who are the most obvious way to pass the eventual legislation. They were not impressed that he did not pick up the phone to have a chat about his plans, leaving them to puzzle over the Sunday newspapers announcement with the rest of the country.

Likewise, it is interesting, no, that he did not do the initial announcement with his childcare minister Sussan Ley, even though her portfolio is so closely involved?

The one bright side is, with a holiday like this, the Prime Minister will be jumping out of his skin to get back to work.

Judith Ireland is a Fairfax Media journalist.