ran a poor campaign, and the electorate was minded to trust the affable, hard-working new premier. Iemma was returned but with far less political capital than the size of Labor's majority would suggest. Proposed electricity privatisation Journalist Simon Benson describes a crucial meeting in late 2007 between Iemma and Labor state president Bernie Riordan during the height of the furore over electricity privatisation: [Iemma] had laid out on his desk a spreadsheet of infrastructure projects … On the bottom half were all the projects the state needed if it was to avoid choking on its own congestion within the next decade. It amounted to more than $25 billion. And that was what they hadn't even announced."This is why I am the Premier," he told Riordan, emphasising his belief that it was critical for the privatisation to succeed. "These [projects] need to be done. I need to do these." Immediately following the 2007 election, Iemma and Treasurer Costa secretly plotted their strategy for the next four years, under the heading of "bullets to bite". Both knew that if they were to build the new rapid transit system and address the growing crisis in electricity supply, they would need to bring the private sector into the state's electricity industry first. The federal party's immediate political needs intervened, with the new federal Labor leader Kevin Rudd persuading Iemma to defer his privatisation announcement until after the 2007 federal election. Rudd felt he could ill afford the distraction of a debate over asset sales in the country's most populous state. With the funding source a secret, the rapid transit plan had to be kept under wraps as well. Along with his plan to sell the government's electricity generation and retailing companies, Iemma announced a massive infrastructure scheme involving South West Rail Link, an inner city motorway network, and the Metro Link network, a system of underground, privately operated, single-deck, automated trains. The government planned to use up to $3 billion from the sale of retail electricity to help fund the inner city motorway network, linking the M4 Western Motorway to the CBD and the airport The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) was ideologically opposed to the privatisation of the electricity businesses and led opposition to the plan. The ETU's secretary, Bernie Riordan, was also the president of NSW Labor. The secretary of the Unions NSW, John Robertson, was also a member of the ETU and