Butler urged to set goals for cutting CO2

MARK Butler is being urged to use his new appointment as climate change minister to commit Australia to more ambitious targets for cutting pollution.

Mr Butler on Monday was named climate change minister in Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's new ministry, exactly one year to the day Labor introduced its carbon price.

He'll pick up from Greg Combet, who resigned from politics after last week's dramatic Labor leadership change.

The shift has raised speculation Mr Rudd might try to bring forward the start date for a floating carbon price, and end the fixed-price period that is agitating business groups.

Under Labor's clean energy laws, Australia's existing carbon pricing mechanism isn't due to change from a fixed price to a market-based emissions trading scheme until July 2015.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said his resolve to abolish the carbon tax wouldn't be shaken if Mr Rudd did go down that path.

"Whether it is a fixed tax or a floating tax, it's still a tax," he told reporters at a Canberra metalworks factory, where he marked the one-year carbon price anniversary.

The Australian Conservation Foundation's Tony Mohr said fiddling with the carbon price was less important than other climate initiatives at stake.

"There's a range of other unfinished policies that are hovering in the shadows and could become commitments during the election or relegated to the policy backbench," he told AAP on Monday.

The most important of these tasks before Mr Butler was to spell out what future pollution-reduction targets Australia would commit to, he added.

Australia has agreed to reduce its emissions by 5 per cent from 2000 levels by the end of the decade, and by up to 25 per cent depending on the action of other nations.

The Climate Institute's John Connor agreed actions were the real test in politics, and Mr Butler is facing a number of key challenges.

Setting emissions targets, as well as planning for the impacts of climate change and improving energy efficiency, would be crucial tests of his time in the portfolio, he said.

As for Mr Butler himself, stakeholders seemed upbeat but admitted knowing little about him personally.

The World Wildlife Fund's Kellie Caught said she'd heard Mr Butler was "extremely consultative", and hoped Mr Rudd's previous form on climate change would bear fruit under his government.

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