Visibly energised from Wednesday night's "people's forum" in Brisbane, Mr Rudd told the cheering crowd that the labour movement was facing the fight of its life against Tony Abbott's Coalition. But, he said, he would fight to the end.

''People have written me off before but I have a habit of coming back,'' he said. ''I've been written off more times than I can remember.

''If I was to put together the newspaper headlines which said, ‘Rudd dead and buried, Rudd dead and buried, Rudd dead and buried’, it would add to frankly two volumes of the fourth shelf of the library down here in Geelong.

''But you know something? I'm made of sterner stuff than that.

''We're made of sterner stuff than that; you’re made of sterner stuff than that. And in this election campaign we're not going to take a backwards step. We're going to fight, fight and fight.''

Joined by Darren Cheeseman, who holds the neighbouring electorate of Corangamite by the smallest margin of 0.3 per cent, and Richard Marles, who holds Corio by a healthy 13.5 per cent, Mr Rudd attacked Mr Abbott's reticence to support the motor industry, on which Geelong relies so heavily.

And, after a week spent campaigning on health and education, Mr Rudd and Industrial Relations Minister Bill Shorten sharpened their attack on the Coalition's industrial relations policies.

For the first time, Mr Rudd likened his 2013 campaign to unfinished business from the 2007 election, signalling that Labor would increasingly campaign on IR issues.

Despite Mr Abbott's assurances that he would ''not touch'' the sections of the workplace relations laws relating to pay and penalties, Mr Rudd said: ''I did not fight the 2007 election to defeat WorkChoices, to see Tony back – Tony Abbott back – in power as part of a conservative government to reintroduce WorkChoices.''

During Wednesday's debate, Mr Abbott said of WorkChoices: ''That particular policy is, to use the famous phrase, dead, buried and cremated ... we learnt our lesson. We lost an election on it.''

As far as pay and penalty rates were concerned, ''we are not going to touch those provisions of the Fair Work Act'', but said he wanted to reduce the power of unions to enter workplaces.

But Mr Shorten said: "We know in this room that we can never take our working conditions for granted again.''

''We know that there is the Coalition who are hungry – led by Tony Abbott – hungry to be in government and we know what they did last time they were in power. They went after the conditions of working people in Australia. And they now say that they've learned the lesson?''

''Bullshit,'' cried a bearded man in the crowd.

But this was never going to be Tony Abbott's crowd.