Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will join more than 400 delegates at the ALP's 49th national conference in Brisbane, which will run over three days starting on Thursday.
It's the first in-person event of its kind since 2018.
Mr Albanese will use the opportunity to call for national unity while spruiking his legacy to date, including on defence, industrial relations and environmental policies.
"We sought the privilege and the opportunity of government to ... bring the country together, to look after Australians doing it tough, to help people under pressure," he says in his foreword.
But as he calls for unity, hardline left faction members and some unionists are fighting behind the scenes to scrub a reference to the AUKUS pact from the national platform.
Opponents of the nuclear-powered submarines acquisition insist there is a need to bring the topic on for debate regardless of how red-faced it could leave the prime minister.
They argue party members have a right to vote on the biggest defence spend in the nation's history, especially with the policy not having been chosen by rank-and-file members.
Some also argue it goes against Labor's longstanding commitment to non-proliferation and banning a civil nuclear industry.
Insiders insist the motion would likely fail on the floor as senior Labor members seek to avoid defeat on the central defence policy.
Peter Khalil welcomed the debate, saying the national security discussion wasn't unsettling for the government.
"We debate issues and this is important because ... we reach the best possible result through that democratic process," the Victorian Labor MP told ABC TV.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons wants the government to sign an international treaty banning weapons of mass destruction, something Mr Albanese committed to in opposition.
Director Gem Romuld said there would be a renewed push at the conference to expedite its signing and ratification.
The Albanese government has strenuously denied the acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines breached Australia's non-proliferation commitments and emphatically rejected that the plan under the AUKUS agreement would lead to nuclear weapons.
Signing and ratifying the ban treaty is already Labor policy but no timeline has been attached with a number of caveats involved.
A commitment to recognise Palestinian statehood also has no timeline, with Mr Albanese under pressure from some delegates to ensure it happens in this term of government.
The influential Labor Environment Action Network is pushing to end native forest logging by the next election and have the agriculture sector halve methane emissions by 2030.
The opposition is already seizing on internal divisions to attack Labor for bowing to the Greens on environmental policy it views as extreme.
Opposition environment spokesman Jonno Duniam called the native logging push "extreme left politics", saying Australian businesses would only turn to overseas markets with less stringent environmental policies.
The Nationals say the agriculture sector is already working towards net-zero emissions and imposing stronger targets would mean herd culls and higher meat prices.
