Labor believes Australians are fed up with the coalition's decade-old scare campaign on climate change policy while power prices have soared.
The opposition is banking on public sentiment in favour of acting on climate change as it released its policy to deal with the issue just ahead of an expected federal election campaign.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten says the coalition's attack job should be irrelevant because Labor has borrowed the government's own safeguard mechanism as the basis of its plan to make big industry cut pollution.
"When you look at it we are using their logic, we are using the best science and evidence, and we are focusing on increasing jobs," he told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday.
"If they don't like what we are doing, they are saying their own mechanism doesn't work."
He said people were over the "day-to-day partisan political rubbish" and the cost of inaction was enormous.
In 2018 alone, natural disasters cost Australians $18 billion, in part leading to the Insurance Council calling for action on climate change, Mr Shorten said.
"(The government) have had six years to prove their scare campaigns work, they have had six years to prove that under a coalition government they can get energy prices down, they have failed every test they have set."
If Labor wins the May election, it will extend the existing safeguard mechanism to cover the 250 biggest industrial polluters but allow them access again to international carbon markets to buy some offset credits if needed.
Carbon credit trading would be between businesses only, with no revenue generated for commonwealth coffers.
Agriculture and electricity generators would be exempt and a $300 million fund will be used to help emissions intensive trade-exposed sectors stay internationally competitive.
Labor would also develop the nation's first strategy addressing the health impacts of climate change such as heatwave deaths and thunderstorm-induced asthma attacks.
