Luke Foley takes pride in his knowledge of political history and it took him only a couple of minutes to underline what will be energising him over the four weeks before the March 28 election.

"There are no 'iron laws' in politics," he told supporters at the Campbelltown Catholic Club on Sunday.

"I wouldn't be standing here as your leader if public life in Australia always went to plan".

It was, of course, a reference to the unexpected manner in which he found himself centre stage as the NSW Labor leader launching the party's 2015 election campaign.

His point was that just as John Robertson's leadership had ended – and his begun – after a run-in with fate, so could Mike Baird's grip on government be broken in a month's time.

"Anyone who has lived through the last 10  years of Australian politics and says an election is unwinnable is a fool," he declared.

The optimism is buoyed by one issue: electricity privatisation, which was recently credited with toppling the Queensland Liberal National Party government after only one term.

"If the Queensland election tells us one thing – it is this," Foley said. "Whatever the majority, voters can stop privatisation by voting Labor".

Foley and the ALP know it is the issue capable of scaring the life out of Coalition supporters as opinion poll after opinion poll shows how much the electorate dislikes the idea of privatising state electricity assets.

And, to be blunt about it, it's pretty much all they've got.

As Foley acknowledged, the voters "didn't get it wrong" in 2011 when they threw Labor out with a record swing.

To expect the electorate to once again trust you with the levers of government just four years later could rightly be described as the height of delusion.

Except that, extraordinarily, it happened in Queensland and in Victoria before that.

Labor is making lots of promises in transport, health, education and elsewhere. There were more on Sunday and there will be more to come, totalling billions of dollars. There are some good policies among them with which Labor would hope to swing a few votes.

But what Labor really wants voters to focus on is their apparent concern about Mike Baird's plan to privatise NSW electricity network businesses – and to punish him accordingly.

<a href="/interactive/2015/nsw-election/electorates/electorates.html?el=Auburn" _rte_href="/interactive/2015/nsw-election/electorates/electorates.html?el=Auburn">Key facts on NSW electorates</a>