Abbott says coalition to revisit IR laws

Ref: Sky News
Tuesday July 28, 2009

The coalition will need to revisit workplace relations laws for the next election
with higher unemployment likely to make voters more receptive, opposition
frontbencher Tony Abbott says.

Mr Abbott says the coalition's Work Choices legislation was soundly rejected
at the 2007 election and was most likely the single biggest reason for the
coalition's election defeat.But he said Labor had gone too far in winding back
workplace reforms.'If we are going to have productive workplaces we can
never bring down the curtain on workplace reform,' he told ABC television.

Mr Abbott said the coalition had taken its lumps on polling day and accepted
the verdict by effectively not opposing Labor's workplace legislation.
'But things I suspect will be a little different by the time the next polling day
comes around.

Unemployment will be substantially increasing not decreasing and a different
economic climate engenders a different response from the electorate,' he said.
'People will be readier for reform from us then than they were at the last election.'

Mr Abbott, whose book Battlelines - subtitled 'the essential manifesto for the
thinking liberal' - is published on Tuesday, is regarded as a potential coalition
leader. He acknowledged that this book was an attempt to rebadge himself
from his past reputation as a hardline Catholic conservative whose colleagues
had informed him in no uncertain terms of his drawbacks.

Asked if the leadership remained on his mind, he replied: 'Sure, but this is
not my time. This is Malcolm's time and my job is to make it as easy as
possible for him to be as competitive as he can be and we can be in the run-
up to the next election.'

All of us from Malcolm down need to be completely focused on maximising
our chances at the next election and that's my intention to be as effective a
lieutenant as I can be for Malcolm between now and polling day.'
Among the controversial policy measures in the book is a proposal for the
pension age to be at least 70.

Mr Abbott said the idea that a person could study to 25 and then retire at
55 or 60 and live on the taxpayer for another 30 years was not a recipe for a
productive society.

The pension age was set back in 1908 when life expectancy was under 60.
Today life expectancy is over 80,' he said.