Suddenly, NSW Labor seems less ashamed of its past. Well, the distant past, anyway.

For the first time in 12 years, Labor wheeled out the grand old men,and women of an indeterminate age, for a state election launch.

Bob Hawke, Neville Wran's widow Jill, Barrie Unsworth, Bob Carr and Kristina Keneally were among the pantheon to anoint Labor's new leader Luke Foley.

Even the federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten showed, pleased to underscore how happy Labor was to have him campaigning in NSW.

"These days, Tony Abbott only comes to NSW to collect the mail and put out the bins," Shorten said as 700 party faithful assembled in the Campbelltown Catholic Club erupted in laughter.

At his 2007 launch, Morris Iemma preferred to eschew Labor's great and good in favour of a few mates from his local electorate.

He duly lost the premiership to Nathan Rees the following year.

Rees did not bother coming on Sunday. Nor did Iemma. Paul Keating was also a no-show.

But Gough Whitlam was certainly evident. Perhaps Labor's grandest old man, he may be gone but he seemed a saintly presence in the Catholic Club.

Uncle Ivan, delivering his welcome to country, spoke movingly of "Uncle Gough" and Foley announced a new schools taskforce "based on the needs-based framework established by the Whitlam reforms of 40 years ago".

Once prime Whitlam territory, the electorate of Campbelltown was chosen for the campaign launch because if Labor cannot win it back they are still out in the cold.

The Liberals' Bryan Doyle took Campbelltown, and thanks to a boundary change holds the seat by 6.8 per cent, making victory a big ask for Labor's Greg Warren, a former soldier.

Warren was hardly mentioned at the launch.

But belle of the ball was Strathfield candidate and former Newcastle MP Jodi McKay, whose tearful appearance before the Independent Commission Against Corruption has turned her into Labor's Joan of Arc.

Perhaps only Novocastrians remember that McKay was parachuted into her former seat by Iemma and the NSW Right as they tried to remain on side with local developers and grab a seat long the property of the ALP left.

Labor's "new approach to NSW" has turned the party's recent history into a form of amnesia and McKay spoke obliquely about the rotten apples as "a few who felt the party served them, instead of the other way around" before introducing Foley.

Fifty-five days after being named Labor leader in the wake of John Robertson's ignominious exit, Luke Foley walked into the auditorium, did the rounds of the great and good and then delivered the best campaign launch speech since Bob Carr in 1999.

Talking of the daunting task of winning so soon after the rout of 2011, Foley quoted Fred Spofforth's Boy's Own Annual words to his teammates when facing defeat in a 1882 cricket match that gave birth to the Ashes.

"'This thing can be done'. And they did it. And an Australian legend was born," Foley said.

"Friends, in NSW, at this election, this thing can be done."

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story has been amended to remove  incorrect references to the then Premier Kristina Keneally's re-election campaign launch, including wrongly describing the relationship to Ms Keneally of her uncle-in-law, Tom Keneally, and incorrectly understating the attendance of senior Labor figures including the then Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. The Herald regrets the errors.