Red tape cuts to make up economic reform

Less red tape for businesses and more flexible workplace laws will be part of the government's economic reform agenda, Scott Morrison says.

The prime minister told the Business Council of Australia's annual dinner in Sydney on Wednesday the country's "next wave of prosperity" would come from tackling productivity.

"Productivity is not about paying people less to do more, but enabling people to earn more from what they do each day," Mr Morrison said.

He told the audience there was a "persuasive argument" that flexibility in the length of enterprise agreements could help attract more business investment.

He said the "administrative clutter" businesses faced with complying with awards and enterprise bargaining could put them off improving their business.

"I would hope we can make progress on reducing the system's overall complexity," Mr Morrison said.

Mr Morrison told business leaders to "marshal the evidence and make the case for change" when it came to industrial relations.

He said the government was also looking at a number of measures to ease the administrative burden on business.

This included a checklist to guide business owners looking to hire workers, easier business registration, a digital portal for major project environmental approvals and a smoother export permit system.