Labor has rejected claims it will reintroduce a carbon tax saying the information is misleading and wrong.

According to a leaked document published News Corp on Wednesday, the party had drafted plans for two new carbon taxes, separating schemes for industry and households, plus vehicle emission standards, new laws to govern power plants and energy efficiency targets for the family home.

The new plan by Bill Shorten’s Opposition had been drawn up, despite the previous carbon tax having doomed prime minister Julia Gillard’s government after she pledged “there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead’’.

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The Opposition’s carbon tax policy document, due to be announced before next week’s ALP national conference, also included an Electricity Transformation Plan to phase out coal-fired power generation in favour of renewable energy sources.

But Opposition Environment spokesman Mark Butler said on Wednesday the document referred to in the reports was a briefing paper, not a fully fledged policy, and full details of what a Labor government would do will be released “well before the election”.

Mr Shorten also rejected claims that Labor would support a carbon tax.

But he confirmed to reporters in Townsville on Wednesday that Labor was preparing a climate policy to take to the next election

“We believe in climate change, we don’t believe in passing the problems of pollution to future generations and our focus will be on renewable energy and there is going to be no carbon tax,” Mr Shorten said.

Treasurer Joe Hockey said Labor would be “crazy” to revive a tax which brought down two of its leaders – Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

“Australia was already meeting its emissions reductions target without a carbon tax,” Mr Hockey told ABC TV.

“It would be madness for Bill Shorten to follow that path, but obviously someone wants to kill Bill at the moment.”

The document said a modified version of the original carbon tax would be resurrected in the first term of a Labor government, but a separate new tax would be imposed on the electricity sector itself.

An accompanying political strategy document warned against revealing too much of the detail of the policy, acknowledging that the cost of living would rise under it but that “household impact” risks would be hard to quantify.

Although businesses would be offered “no upfront cost” in the 2016-2019 first phase of the emissions trading scheme, firms exceeding the cap would have to buy international credits to offset their emissions.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt said on Wednesday Labor had serious questions to answer about how the document was leaked to the public.

“It’s not just one carbon tax, but a double carbon tax,” Mr Hunt said.

“If Bill Shorten says ‘don’t believe what my cabinet paper says’, then you can’t trust Bill.”

Prime Minister Tony Abbott told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday: “if Labor comes back, the carbon tax will be back”.

“It shows that Bill Shorten is a carbon copy of Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd,” he said.

“You can’t trust Labor not to be a pain in the hip pocket.”

– with AAP