Tony Abbott signals a return to individual work agreements under revamped IR policy

TONY Abbott has given his strongest signal yet that the Coalition is considering a form of individual bargaining under a reworked industrial relations policy.

The Opposition Leader today called for “more freedom” in Australian workplaces, and mounted a case for non-union agreement-making between workers and their employers.

“I think we ought to be able to trust businesses and the workers of Australia to come to arrangements that suit themselves,” he told 3AW's Neil Mitchell.

Mr Abbott, who declared Work Choices “dead and buried” at the last election, said greater workplace flexibility was required to address the productivity slump that was dragging the economy down.

His comments follow those of former prime minister John Howard, who last night lashed the Gillard government's tightening of workplace rules.

“It's blindingly obvious that one of the worst mistakes Julia Gillard has made is to re-regulate the labour market,” Mr Howard told ABC TV.

“It is affecting our productivity and it will therefore affect our competitiveness.”

Mr Abbott said Mr Howard was “essentially right”, but he baulked at pre-empting the Coalition's election policy, and said he wasn't signalling a return to Work Choices.

“We've got a lot of problems and I want to be a pragmatic problem solver,” he said.

Statutory individual contracts, known as Australian Workplace Agreements, were the centrepiece of Work Choices, with Mr Howard previously admitting he went too far by axing the no-disadvantage test that ensured workers could not be left worse off under the agreements.

Labor's industrial relations regime only allows individual agreements, in the form of common law contracts, for workers on higher incomes.

Liberal frontbencher Malcolm Turnbull today said the Coalition should wait for the government's Fair Work laws to fail before unveiling its industrial relations policies.

“There's some merit in holding fire for a little while longer,” Mr Turnbull said.

He said the opposition had argued from the outset that the Fair Work changes would make Australian industries less productive and increase costs for business.

“I believe our warnings have been borne out by experience. Others may not be so convinced,” he said.

Mr Turnbull said the opposition would be in a much better position to frame arguments about the need to reintroduce a measure of flexibility to workplace laws closer to the election.

A review into Labor's Fair Work Act will begin early next year amid criticisms of the laws from Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens and the Productivity Commission.

-With Lanai Vasek