Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is facing opposition from within his own party, after he said he would support a turn-back policy for asylum seekers' boats.
But key members of his power base believe the Labor leader has the numbers to push a rule change through the ALP national conference, which starts on Friday.
Trade unions, members of Labor's Left faction and refugee groups have attacked Mr Shorten's decision that pre-empts a debate about a less harsh policy.
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The Refugee Council of Australia has accused him of "pandering to the politics of fear".
Mr Shorten is proposing to have the Labor conference adopt a tougher policy than the one outlined in a 200-page draft platform that supports mandatory detention and offshore processing of asylum seekers.
The Left wants those two policies dropped in favour of a less harsh community-based approach.
Right faction powerbroker Stephen Conroy believes the Shorten policy will only just get across the line, with neither side having a majority of conference delegates.
Mr Shorten conceded Labor did not get the policy right in government, saying it underestimated the ability of people smugglers to exploit vulnerable people in great numbers and entice them on to unsafe boats.
"I can no longer escape the conclusion that Labor, if we form a government, needs to have all the options on the table," he said.
Opposition immigration spokesman Richard Marles argues it would be profoundly immoral for Labor to allow boat journeys to resume.
Both he and Mr Shorten flagged that Labor would increase Australia's humanitarian refugee intake - now 13,750 a year - to appease opponents of a tougher approach to asylum seekers arriving by boat. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton is not convinced by Mr Shorten's sudden change of heart.
"If I thought it was genuine, I would welcome it," he said. Treasurer Joe Hockey was also sceptical, saying it had all the hallmarks of a pretend fight.
Mr Shorten would try to scuttle the free trade agreement with China to appease unions in return for a win on border protection, he told reporters in Sydney.
Prominent Labor backbencher Anna Burke is bitterly disappointed with the Shorten plan.
"(Former Liberal prime minister John) Howard created political footballs out of human lives and we have to get above that," she said.
The Greens accused Mr Shorten of "kowtowing" to the government's policy of turning back asylum seeker boats.
"It's the coward's way to play politics with people's lives rather than stand up and call for a humanitarian response," the party's immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young told reporters.
Refugee lawyer David Manne lamented there were many cases of people being turned back who had been found to be genuine refugees.
The United Nations' refugee agency is unimpressed, saying asylum seekers must be properly and individually screened.
Boat turn-backs were "contrary to the spirit" of the 1951 refugee convention and set a negative precedent for other countries, it said.
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