At a fiery meeting in his under-threat inner Sydney seat, Mr Albanese also told opponents to the 33-kilometre motorway that he was not responsible for the project and they were misdirecting their anger.

Hundreds of people crowded into Balmain Town Hall on Thursday night to watch Mr Albanese and the Greens candidate who is challenging him for his seat of Grayndler, Jim Casey, address a public forum together for the first time since the election was called.

Mr Albanese has held the seat for nearly 20 years, but redrawn electoral boundaries could see his margin drop dramatically depending on where the Liberal party places its preferences.

The WestConnex project, which is being funded by the NSW and federal governments, has been hugely controversial in the inner west.

When Labor was in federal government, Mr Albanese offered $25 million for planning of the motorway. In the 2013 budget he also promised up to $1.8 billion for the M4 and M5 motorway components with the conditions that a detailed business case be completed, that the motorway provide a direct link to central Sydney and Port Botany and that new tolls would not be imposed on existing roads.

The Coalition government has committed $3.5 billion in direct funding and loans to the project, which will now be the subject of an Auditor-General investigation.

Mr Albanese said Labor would not provide any money for the motorway if elected, but it was too late to withdraw the other funds as most had already been forwarded and contracts had been signed.

"If we're going to be successful in this you've got to analyse things as they are, rather than as you would like them to be...The fact is this is a state coalition government project and the way to stop this project, regardless of who is elected federally, is to get the state government to stop this project," Mr Albanese said.

"The fact is if I am the transport minister there will be not one dollar from the federal Labor government for this WestConnex project."

Mr Albanese said the community needed a local member who understood how parliament worked and hit back at one heckler: "The way that movements are successful is they build alliances. They don't try to divide people who essentially agree on the same objectives."

Mr Casey, who is the head of the NSW Fire Brigade Employees Union, said the demolition of houses for WestConnex should stop immediately and the flow of federal money into the project should be frozen.

"The first thing to say about this project really is that it can be stopped. We can stop WestConnex and I think that's the way we have to approach this," Mr Casey said.

"It seems like the entire edifice is teetering. You stop the federal money and there's a very good chance the project stops altogether."

NSW Roads Minister Duncan Gay said Mr Albanese's promise was an attempt to "curry favour with his electorate as he tries to save his political skin".

"We have already received federal government funding and the business case we are working to allows us to finish WestConnex without further Federal funding, and Anthony Albanese fully knows it," Mr Gay said.

Although it was a forum not a one-on-one debate, audience members had mixed opinions about whether Mr Casey or Mr Albanese performed best.

"Casey was more genuine," Annandale resident Kristina Major said. "Albanese was getting a bit condescending in the end and he was being a politician. We're the people who vote them in and they talk to us like we're stupid."

Leichhardt resident Rob Davidson said: "Albo's a good speaker, he handles himself very well...He'll never back away from a question."