Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has confirmed the Coalition will repeal the Government's carbon tax if it wins the next election.

The Opposition has been on the attack over the tax since Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced it on Thursday, but until now had stopped short of saying the Coalition would repeal the scheme.

This morning, Opposition frontbencher Andrew Robb told reporters the Coalition would scrap the tax if it won the next election.

A short time later, Mr Abbott repeated the promise.

"Our position on this is the same as our position on the mining tax, we will oppose it in Opposition, we will rescind it in government," he said.

"If the Coalition wins the next election you can be absolutely confident there will be no mining tax and no carbon tax," he said.

Mr Robb said the Coalition would keep the issue front and centre until the next election.

"Julia Gillard has promised not to do this, and now, having formed a Government, she's now doing it," he said.

"There'll be no chance for people [to have a say], or there will be at the next election - because if we get in we will scrap it."

The Coalition has been using Ms Gillard's statements when she ruled out a carbon tax before the election to accuse her of breaking a key election promise.

This morning Ms Gillard compared her carbon tax deal with the Greens to John Howard's negotiations with the Democrats to pass the GST.

"[John Howard] went to the election promising a Goods and Services Tax, [but] the parliament the people gave him meant he had to negotiate to get it through the Senate. He sat down and he negotiated with Meg Lees," she told ABC radio.

"That was John Howard working with the parliament the Australian people had voted; I am doing the same thing."

But Mr Robb described Ms Gillard's claims that the make-up of the new parliament gave her a mandate to impose the tax as a cynical political exercise.

"With the GST John Howard went to an election, and he took a lot of skin off, a lot of members lost their seats, it was a very close election, but he got a mandate at an election," he said.

Mr Robb said the tax would not help the environment, and said middle income earners would be slugged with $1,000 a year in costs from the scheme.

"They'll make a big song and dance about the first year or two of compensation for low income earners, but it will come off quickly and the whole economy will have the weight of this tax forever more," he said.

And Mr Robb said he was confident Malcolm Turnbull, who lost the leadership campaigning for an ETS, would fall into line with the rest of the party.

"We're a team, so you have to take the view of the majority," Mr Robb said.

"The overwhelming majority of the party room are violently opposed to this new tax and I'm sure Malcolm will ... run the party line and do it effectively."