Environment Minister Greg Hunt reckons Labor will eventually adopt the government's climate policy, which the opposition has described as a Soviet-style voucher system.
But Mr Hunt says if Labor is installed to government on July 2, voters will be slugged an electricity tax.
The opposition has been critical of the government's $2.55 billion direct action policy, which pays polluters not to pollute.
Labor has promised to implement an emissions trading scheme, insisting the plan bears no resemblance to the party's scrapped carbon tax.
But Mr Hunt believes if Labor doesn't win this election, the party will accept the coalition's policy.
"In the end ... whenever in the future they come back into government, whatever time (they) will use our system as the basis," Mr Hunt told Sky News on Sunday.
"But at this election, if they are successful, they will bring back an electricity tax."
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has described direct action as an "amateur, ill-conceived, centralist, Soviet-style voucher system that gives the nation's biggest polluters great wads of taxpayer money to keep polluting".
However, there's scope to build on the direct action policy and turn it into an emissions trading scheme.
The government is considering adding international credits to the policy next year.
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