Katelin McInerney admits the Labor government needs to do more for the Kiama electorate with transport at the top of her agenda.

The Labor candidate for next month’s by-election has spent the first week on the election campaign getting out and about to talk to locals but also show she was committed to making improvements in the region.

McInerney was joined by Chris Minns in Bomaderry last Sunday to spruik the Build to Rent project which will deliver 60 new homes in Bomaderry and the Premier was back on the South Coast on Tuesday at Albion Park to announce a further $20 million in funding for the Tripoli Way bypass.

She was in Kangaroo Valley on Wednesday with NSW Transport Minister Jenny Aitchison to announce nightwork would be undertaken for the historic Hampden Bridge, options for a new crossing of Kangaroo River and a $500,000 pledge towards planning for a permanent new bridge.

Transport and traffic are major problems in the electorate and McInerney conceded plenty of work needed to be done to address those issues and many others in the region.

“I’ve been at the train station in Kiama talking to commuters about the need for improvements to the South Coast service. Anyone who's traveled on that line knows that it needs a great deal of work. And that's why NSW Labor put $10 million into formulating our resilience plan,” she said.

“Our plan will look at the line from Sydney south to Bomaderry. The reality is the scoping work on what the line would need to be upgraded, that work hasn't been done for a number of years.

“When NSW Labor came into government in 2023, the maintenance backlog was enormous. There were more than a thousand urgent jobs to be completed.

"We've had to do a lot of that backlog of maintenance work, which has greatly inconvenienced train passengers to the South Coast but it’s really important safety work.

“There’s a lot more to do. It'll be a big one for me, making sure that we're doing everything we can to improve that line. It'll cost money. And that's certainly something I plan to be a very big advocate over because transport is a social determinant of success.”

“I brought the transport minister down and showed them the timetable inside Kiama train station from when we had the steam train services and the old red rattlers. It didn't look as different as you’d want it to a century later.

“There’s work to do, we've put the money into making sure we know what that's going to look like, what we need and what it's going to cost. And it'll be my job if I'm lucky enough to get elected to be pushing for the investment.”

McInerney may be considered the favourite to win the by-election but she is not taking anything for granted.

“It's going to be tough having knocked on hundreds of doors across Albion Park, Kiama and in the south of the electorate. People are doing it tough,” she said.

“They're telling me the issues are very similar to what we were talking about in the 2023 election. I'm not surprised that education, public schools, medical services, essential services are still high on people's priority lists. So are roads, everywhere we go, people are talking about making sure that we've got money there for roads.

“The NSW government and the federal Labor governments have both put significant money into disaster recovery in our area. There's been a significant spend to make our roads more resilient.

“There's more work to do there, but we've seen that money coming in and we’ve seen the results of the works on those roads.

“It's a fight for every vote for sure. I think that the community is fed up with the uncertainty we've had over the past five years and they just want someone who's going to get in there and do the job.”