Labour leader Jacinda Ardern was challenged on her recent climate change flip-flop and the party's refusal to change tack on releasing a definitive tax plan, in a feisty exchange with TVNZ1's Breakfast host Jack Tame today.

Tame began his exchange on climate change and taxes by playing a clip to the Labour leader from an August 29 appearance on Breakfast where she told Tame her party wouldn't release a carbon neutral target date until speaking to climate experts after the election.

Tame then pointed out that only two-weeks later Labour made an announcement declaring 2050 as their date for a carbon neutral New Zealand.

"I asked you very clearly if you were going to set 2050 as the year and you said 'no I am going to leave that to the climate commission' which is post election, and then you come out and say 2050," Tame said.

"I said in that interview that the Green Party were about right with what they were setting, which is what we have set too," Ms Ardern replied.

The Breakfast host then pointed out the seeming inconsistency between this and Labour's refusal to back down on releasing their tax-plans until a working group can look into the issue after the election.

"If you can reach a conclusion on being carbon neutral by 2050, why can you not do the same with tax before the election?" he said.

Ms Ardern then explained they would still be using a climate commission to help make the intermediary steps to becoming carbon neutral if Labour forms the next government, while also saying she has goals for her tax plans as well.

"These are quite different things, well probably there are some similarities, we set a goal that we want to be carbon neutral by 2050, but at the same time over on tax I've set a goal that I want to reverse our sliding home ownership rates.

"Where the two topics are actually different, is we have set out a fleshed out a goal of how to get there with carbon because the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has done a huge amount of work for us already," the Labour leader said.