Bill Shorten told colleagues in caucus during the last sitting week in September that voters were taking a second look at Labor.

He acknowledged the opposition had taken some hits by championing brave policies, like changes to negative gearing and dividend imputation. But he promised goodies were on the way. Thanks to all that revenue raising, there would be spending between now and December.

While the government attempts to recalibrate after the trauma of tossing out a prime minister, and Scott Morrison ploughs ahead with looking busy and non-threatening while he works out what the Coalition’s election pitch is going to be, Labor is doing some recalibration of its own – rolling out some of the goodies that Shorten foreshadowed at the last caucus meeting, and trying to get a fix on the new opponent.

The political battle between now and December is simple.

Morrison wants to get back in the political game, using the uplift in the economy to help him get there, and Shorten wants to stop that from happening. The Labor leader’s current strategy is a combination of disdain (he’s taken to calling the prime minister “the new bloke”) and presenting himself as the political leader ready to govern, with a fleshed-out program, and a united team.

While Shorten is rolling out his battle plan, there are problems burbling away in the background.

One of the most under-reported stories in Canberra in recent years has been Labor’s shifting disposition on trade liberalisation. The party of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating was open to the world, and proud of it. The party of Bill Shorten, less so.

Labor came within a whisker of declining to support the China free trade agreement, largely because of trenchant union opposition, which manifested in caucus opposition and resulted in a rolling bun-fight that took months to resolve.

A similar battle, although not quite as robust, and certainly not as protracted, has played out over the trans-Pacific partnership.

Two unions in particular, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, and the Electrical Trades Union, are strongly opposed to the TPP-11, and the state branches are in open revolt.

According to a number of accounts, the union official at the centre of the internal China trade fight, Michael O’Connor from the CFMEU, has not been active on TPP, at least not thus far, which has made things slightly easier for Labor’s shrinking free trade faction.

Given the headwinds, Labor’s trade spokesman Jason Clare has agreed to introduce laws prohibiting governments from signing trade agreements that waive labour market testing or include investor-state dispute settlement provisions (ISDS). ISDS clauses allow foreign companies to sue the Australian government for policy changes. These concessions were required to secure the requisite caucus and shadow cabinet backing for signing on to the TPP-11 enabling legislation.

There was a substantial debate in caucus before that position was rubber stamped, then another one the following week, when a couple of left-wing senators, Doug Cameron and Gavin Marshall, tried (and failed) to reopen the decision.

Given the resolve of the leadership has held through the turbulence, supporters of trade liberalisation now want to push on and get the TPP-11 legislated, pronto, without generating more ruckus.

But a public fight can’t be avoided. The ALP national conference looms in December, and it looks certain there will a fight over the trade policy party platform, and specifically, the people movement provisions, which is at the sharp end of union sensitivities.

Home affairs department statistics show the China free trade deal has not resulted in an influx of workers on 457 visas (in fact quite the contrary, there has been a decline in the number of 457 visas being granted to Chinese nationals in 2016 and 2017), but unions and their caucus allies remain hyper-attentive about the risks of a globalised labour market triggering a race to the bottom.

There’s a meeting of national left power brokers from the party and the unions on Saturday to scope out some of the national conference terrain. What emerges from that will be a useful litmus test of how bolshie things will ultimately get.

Sitting alongside the trade fight is an ongoing dialogue between the unions and the party about what can be done on industrial relations reform.

One of the backroom calculations in the trade fight will doubtless be an assessment of how far can you push Shorten and other key frontbenchers, particularly the crew from the New South Wales right, while still getting most of what you want in the industrial relations sortie.

The unions have a big wishlist. Senior players in Canberra are certainly receptive to changing the system, and the shadow minister Brendan O’Connor has already laid down some markers to signal serious reform is on the way.

But senior parliamentary players also insist the unions will not get everything they want, knowing if the pendulum swings too far, that will trigger a business backlash at the business end of the electoral cycle, and fuel the Coalition’s narrative that Shorten is a union puppet.

Two areas where the party and the labour movement will have to bridge the current gap between expectations and realpolitik will be on industry-level bargaining and the right to strike.

The ACTU has been signalling for months it wants (among other things) sectoral or industry bargaining as a tool to boost sluggish wages growth – a message Sally McManus repeated publicly this week in a speech to a Labor thinktank, just in case anyone had missed the earlier iterations.

OK, says the Canberra end of the negotiation, but it can’t be one size fits all. Construction workers are currently getting pay outcomes at double the rate of inflation – do they want, or need, industry bargaining with arbitration attached? Low paid workers who are industrially weak need a more effective mechanism than enterprise-level bargaining, but do all workers?

And round it goes. There is no deal yet.

So where does this leave Shorten? Labor is in a strong position, ahead in the opinion polls since the last federal election. Apart from a serious wobble ahead of the super-Saturday byelections, internal discipline has held.

The first run of polls since the leadership change have been bad for the Coalition, and this particular episode of prime ministerial switcheroo is the first time voters have marked down the major parties for a leadership change. The next run of surveys will tell us whether that voter anger is washing through, or whether it is hard set.

Both sides know the next election will most likely be won or lost before the end of this year, even if voters don’t go to the polls until next May.

Scott Morrison has to begin to claw the contest back to where it was before conservatives decided they couldn’t stand to look at Malcolm Turnbull for one more second, and animus trumped everything. If he doesn’t begin to make headway, animus will again trump everything.

With the finish line in sight, Shorten has to lift, and manage the internal cross-currents. He can’t bank on sustaining the current two-party preferred lead, and his behaviour at the moment tells you he isn’t banking on it.

If voters are really taking a second look, as he told caucus colleagues in September, then they will need to be convinced by what they see, and the leader knows it.