Shadow minister for regional roads and transport Jenny Aitchison insists Labor would pause, not cancel, proposed Great Western Highway tunnel

That was the message from shadow minister for regional roads and transport Jenny Aitchison when she visited Bathurst this week as the state election campaign enters the final straight.

Ms Aitchison also reminded voters that the Nationals had been talking for years about a better crossing of the Blue Mountains - stretching back to the idea of a Bells Line expressway - but had yet to deliver.

The shadow minister was in Bathurst to make an announcement of a $15.4 million "emergency road repairs package" for the electorate if Labor wins office.

It was a visit that came a fortnight after NSW Labor leader Chris Minns told a crowd in western Sydney that his party, if elected, would take $1.1 billion allocated in the state budget for a proposed Great Western Highway tunnel and redirect it to roads across western Sydney and regional NSW.

"This could be an $8 to $11 billion tunnel," Mr Minns said at the Future Western Sydney event.

"It has no business case. And it only has $1.1 billion allocated to it in the budget. And let's be clear, that does not buy you an 11km tunnel under the Blue Mountains.

"The remaining $10 billion cannot be found. It's not in the budget - and is completely unfunded. That $1.1 billion is far better spent on local roads across western Sydney and regional NSW."

Mr Minns' announcement was seized upon at the time by Bathurst MP and Deputy Premier Paul Toole, who said the NSW Labor leader was "cancelling a game-changing highway upgrade that would better connect Sydney with western NSW".

Blue Mountains Labor MP Trish Doyle, however, subsequently told her local newspaper that Labor's position was "to defer the tunnel for two years" and to "approach this proposal with the due diligence it has always demanded".

The tunnel is proposed to run from Little Hartley to Blackheath as part of the NSW Government's overall proposed duplication of the highway from Lithgow to Katoomba.

Ms Aitchison, while in Bathurst, addressed criticism of Labor's position on the tunnel, which has included anger from the Country Mayors Association.

She said the independent Infrastructure NSW body had recommended the tunnel project, among other mega-projects, be delayed and Infrastructure Australia had said the tunnel project "was not meeting the BCR [benefit-cost ratio]".

"After 12 years in government, of which seven years they have had a federal Coalition government, they have got not very far at all with this project," Ms Aitchison said of the NSW Coalition.

She emphasised that the $1.1 billion would be redirected to projects both within the regions and in Sydney and said the thousands of kilometres she had spent travelling the state in the lead-up to the election had taken her through many electorates where half-finished projects languished because they hadn't been seen through to the end by the NSW Coalition.

"It's an 11-kilometre tunnel," Ms Aitchison said.

"The minister [Minister for Regional Transport and Roads Sam Farraway] has admitted publicly that it is around Labor's projections of about $1 billion a kilometre to get that tunnel done.

"You do not start a project like that or commit further funds to it if you don't know for sure that the project is right."

She said NSW Labor wants "to do this once and we want to do it right and that is why we have asked the community to bear with us; we want to have a pause on this so we can do it properly".

Mr Farraway said, during a media conference in Forbes earlier this month, that the NSW Coalition's plan to fund the tunnel had always been to seek a 20-80 funding split between the state and the Commonwealth.

This, he said, was how the Pacific Highway duplication had been funded.

Ms Aitchison said, during her visit to Bathurst, that NSW Labor will "have a good conversation with the federal government - something that the current state government has failed to do with either federal government to date, in 12 years - to actually get a proper solution and ensure that the project can be done".

Labor has accused the NSW Coalition of having plans for further privatisations to pay for its major infrastructure projects.

"Chris Minns has been very clear that we will not be selling publicly owned assets in order to fund infrastructure," Ms Aitchison said.

"We will make the savings and we have got a number of savings in there around putting caps on politicians' wages ... but also doing some stimulation to our local economies - ensuring that we have wages for nurses and frontline workers and teachers at a level that they will stay in our areas and teach our students and look after our people in the hospital.

"Our approach is having a whole of economy, a whole of government approach, not just saying that we're going to do something for 12 years, like the Liberals and Nationals have said, and not being able to deliver it."

She also said that the NSW Government's decision to have a number of mega-projects running simultaneously meant the government was bidding against itself for workers and materials, pushing up prices.

The wrangling over the proposed tunnel follows the new federal Labor government's decision last year to delay for two years the Commonwealth funding previously committed to the Great Western Highway upgrade's east and west sections.

Despite that, work on two small sections of the highway upgrade - at Coxs River Road near Little Hartley and at Medlow Bath in the Blue Mountains - has started.