Before the NSW election, Labor derided the Coalition's $960 million highway pledge as "Monopoly money" and "smoke and mirrors". In that press release, they failed to mention exactly how much they would commit to saving lives.

This masthead had plenty to say about that schoolyard response.

NSW Labor eventually did commit to matching the funds the Coalition outlined in its forward estimates, five days out from the election - but seemed incapable of independent thought on the issue.

It is not as if Labor's Sussex St headquarters had lacked time to get its collective head around a safer highway. The FIX IT NOW campaign had been running for more than a year by the time NSW went to the polls.

We have brought you, our readers, a fat file of stories - from the personal heartfelt tales of victims and their families, to analysis from the NRMA, engineeers, local government, business - and the ordinary drivers who use the highway every day.

If ever we were tempted to take our foot from the campaign pedal, the sirens of crews rushing to another crash prevented us.

NSW Labor's response smacked of petty politics and felt horribly as if the highway south of Nowra was an afterthought - one Illawarra MPs and their apparatchiks could dodge.

On Tuesday, we got more of the same.

An Illawarra-based politician - Whitlam MP Stephen Jones, who has driven this highway himself many times in our long, if undeclared, federal election campaign - dismissed the Coalition's $500 million promise for the highway as a "fraud".

Yes, just $100 million of those promised funds were included in the forward estimates - but the Coalition publicly committed to funding the rest as the state government completed each stage of its promised work.

What Mr Jones did not say was how much his party intended to promise for the road.

Time to put up or shut up.