Australia's environment minister wanted to go to a key summit with an agreed statement on climate change but she's been told to come up with a plan to tackle it first.

Melissa Price met with her state counterparts in Canberra on Friday and asked them to endorse a statement to take to a climate meeting in Katowice, Poland, on Saturday.

"What I had suggested was that we had an agreed statement that we would all work together to determine an action plan with respect to climate, with respect to things that we can do individually and collectively," she told reporters on Friday.

"Sadly that was not agreed.

"There was not an agreement on the words that I proposed, and no one proposed alternative words."

Queensland Environment Minister Leeanne Enoch said the states refused because there was still no national plan to tackle climate change.

"It is time for the federal government to stop 'noting' the science around the impacts of climate change, and actually step up and take action," she said in a statement.

"It is unacceptable that there has been no progress on climate change by the federal government."

Ms Enoch said she asked Ms Price to come back to the next meeting with an action plan of how to respond to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report's findings about the dangers of 1.5 degree global warming.

"Unfortunately, the federal environment minister would not agree to undertake that important work," she said.