Junior climate change minister Greg Combet said the bill, which has been the subject of fierce debate, needed to pass before December's global environment talks in Copenhagen.

"What each country does at home matters a lot," Combet told parliament. "It is squarely in Australia's national interest to show up at the negotiating table in Copenhagen with a plan to deliver our targets."

The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is aimed at cutting emissions by between five and 25 percent by 2020, with the higher figure dependent on the rest of the world adopting "ambitious" reduction targets in Copenhagen.

A second rejection, after it was voted down by the Senate in August, would allow Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to dissolve parliament and call an early election, although he denies having any intention to do so.

Rudd, who won office in 2007 on an environmentally friendly platform, has described climate change as "the greatest moral challenge of our generation" in Australia, which is in the grip of the worst drought in a century.

Some 190 countries will meet in Copenhagen to thrash out a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

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