Former prime minister Paul Keating is backing plans for a carbon tax, and says Opposition Leader Tony Abbott needs a "political judo chop" for his handling of the issue.
Mr Keating said the Gillard government's planned carbon tax would be a major reform, ranking up there with big changes in the 1980s.
"It stands with those big changes; Medicare, superannuation, deregulation," Mr Keating told ABC TV on Thursday.
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"Do you know what Tony Abbot's policy is? If you don't give me the job I will wreck the place.
"Tony has got to have the political judo chop, that is what Tony has to have," Mr Keating said.
The former prime minister and federal treasurer said Australia needed to get involved in new green industries because that was where future growth lay.
Mr Keating, who sits on the board of the China Development Bank, said in China green industries were recognised as the key new-growth industries.
"The idea that we turn our back on the ... new transforming Australian economy by not letting carbon be priced and therefore capital allocated properly is nonsense," Mr Keating said.
He said that Mr Abbott's policy was to give polluters money to change their bad habits, which would not work.
"The terms of trade are affecting a massive transition on us and this pricing mechanism in carbon is part of this transition," Mr Keating said.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Thursday continued her sales pitch for the new tax with an address to the National Press Club, while Mr Abbott took his anti-carbon tax campaign to the town of Gatton, west of Brisbane.
