Christian Porter launches review of industrial relations system

The minister, who is also the Attorney-General, will consider submissions about the definition of a casual employee - which business leaders and unions had told him caused "frustrations" amid disputes over workers' "double dipping" claims - as part of the review.

While he would not commit to legislating an objective test - as promised by Labor ahead of last month's federal election - Mr Porter acknowledged that "there is a view that there is a lack of clarity" under the current law.

"Everyone benefits from having clarity in the system," he told the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in an interview on Wednesday.

Mr Porter said he would seek submissions over the next six to nine months, vowing only to make changes that were "evidence based" and would benefit both workers and employers.

"First of all I want to be convinced that there is sufficient uncertainty that it's actually creating a problem," he said.

"What I don't want to do is assume problems based on advocacy."

Employers have been concerned about the casual issue since the Federal Court ruled that a former truck driver who worked for Rio Tinto through a labour hire company was a permanent employee owed annual leave and other entitlements, despite having been hired as a casual.

The case has sparked a number of class action lawsuits in the mining industry, with retail and hospitality employers fearing they could be next.

A government regulation enacted by former minister Kelly O'Dwyer last term aims to stop workers from "double dipping" on entitlements and the casual loadings that are supposed to compensate for them, but is yet to be tested in court.

Mr Porter said the Australian Council of Trade Unions' Change the Rules campaign had argued there was "a massive problem around the extent or nature of casual employment" when rates of casual employment had been steady at about 25 per cent for two decades.

"The problem is not any particular type of work," he said.

"They are all legitimate and people move between different types of work at different periods in their life cycle - and that should be simple and flexible."

But, he said, there were issues "at the margins ... around how we define, in a changed work environment, these types of employment."

Mr Porter attacked Labor's failed industrial relations platform, rejecting comments by shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers who linked the ALP's electoral defeat with "perception" issues around the party's position on coal in a speech to the National Press Club on Tuesday.

"Dude, they were reality issues," Mr Porter said.

"People fundamentally rejected quite specific policy proposals, both in this area and other areas. It wasn't personnel or perception; it was policy that people rejected."

The minister argued that voters had "thoroughly" rejected Bill Shorten's plan to restore the penalty rates cut by the Fair Work Commission "under a system that Labor themselves set up" and the idea "that politicians should intervene whenever they feel like it, to set a wage".

He said the Opposition's promised childcare wage subsidy would have come "at an enormous cost to the federal budget".

"These things are not procedural, they're not balanced, they're not fair."

Asked if the nation would see a return to the WorkChoices era, Mr Porter said he had "no interest in treating the industrial relations system as a contest" and that his reforms would benefit both employers and employees.

The review will also examine the enterprise bargaining system and "better off overall" test, which enterprise agreements must meet before the Fair Work Commission approves them, and consider if changes can be made to speed up approvals.