Govt mounts fresh carbon tax attack on ALP

Federal Labor frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon has given the government fresh ammunition to portray the opposition's plans for an emissions trading scheme as another carbon tax.

The ALP national conference has endorsed leader Bill Shorten's plan to take forward an ETS to the next federal election along with an ambitious target for Australia to be produce 50 per cent of its energy from renewables by 2030.

Mr Shorten told the conference on Friday "an ETS is not a tax" and he was happy to take on the coalition on climate change policy.

Mr Fitzgibbon says he doesn't care if people describe it as tax.

"It's a price. I don't care if people call it a tax. If they want to run a scare campaign, fine," he told Network Ten program The Bolt Report on Sunday.

If the former Labor government's fixed carbon pricing scheme had been left to become a floating one the price of carbon would be around $10 a tonne, Mr Fitzgibbon argued.

"And that would have virtually no impact on consumers," he added.

The party's agriculture spokesman also said the 2030 renewable energy target was an "aspiration" and no-one yet knew how much it would cost.

"Technology is changing so rapidly ... we don't know how cheaply you might get to 50 per cent," he said.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt said Mr Fitzgibbon had made an extraordinary admission.

"A Labor frontbencher has now confirmed that if elected, Labor will introduce a carbon tax - no ifs, no buts," he said in a statement.

"This admission has all the hallmarks of Julia Gillard's confession that the former Labor government had also introduced a carbon tax after promising not to."

Mr Hunt called on Labor to release its modelling on the impact of the ETS on power prices.

Labor frontbencher Kim Carr said the ETS was "not a tax".

"That's just wrong - it's not a tax," he told reporters at the party's conference in Melbourne.

"An emissions trading scheme is a way of ensuring we do something about controlling dangerous pollution."

He said it was important for the jobs of the future and Australia acting on climate change at a global level.