Howard government minister Peter Reith has slammed Premier Colin Barnett for his inaction on industrial relations and allowing an "open-door policy" for unions.
It comes a week after Transport Minister Troy Buswell said the federal government's IR changes had allowed unions to strike at Esperance port, costing it 260,000 tonnes of iron ore.
But Mr Reith said the state government would have much more credibility on this issue if it reformed its own IR system as well which covered about 450,000 people.
He suggested Mr Barnett introduce a code of conduct for the building industry to help "moderate poor behaviour on government construction sites".
"When this proposal, currently being drafted for Victoria, was suggested for Perth the WA Premier Colin Barnett said that WA did not have a problem," Mr Reith wrote on the ABC Drum website.
Mr Reith said that if the government refused to reform its state system it could "hardly support the resource sector's call for a better federal system".
"The WA approach will only embolden WA unions to focus their energies against the resource sector and will ensure that the problems in Esperance will spread."
While individuals only had a certain timeframe to make an unfair dismissal application, Mr Reith said no time limit applied to unions.
The WA government is also refusing to introduce exemptions against unfair dismissal claims for small business, he said.
"The current laws are as good as an open-door policy for unions," Mr Reith said.
"Why is it fair that a union boss can walk into a small business that has no union members and where unions are not wanted, and just about anyone nominated by a union can get a state entry permit.
"No notice has to be provided before entry and they can come in and talk to anyone about just about anything."
Mr Reith, said the WA Liberals used to lead the way on individual agreements and gave great support for their use in the mining industry but now they are in the "too hard basket".
The attack comes months after the WA government junked a $850,000 review into the state's IR system it had commissioned itself.
In explaining why the WA government would ignore all of Steven Amendola's 193 recommendations, Mr Barnett said they were too much like Work Choices.
Mr Reith said the WA premier had adopted "a novel tactic ... of using Labor's scare campaign against the federal coalition to justify his inaction".
