The Greens MP was in Wollongong to announce the Coal, Community and Environment Trust (CCET), which would use mining royalties to help coal communities transitioning to new economies.

"I’ve been knocking on a lot of doors around this state," Mr Shoebridge said, "and pretty much to a person people have been saying the Liberal party deserves to lose but Labor does not deserve to win.

"We’re likely to have neither party having a majority in the parliament."

Mr Shoebridge said, if the Greens held the balance of power, the funding for the CCET would be "front and centre in our negotiations with a minority government".

The CCET would be funded with 20 per cent of the state's coal royalties, which the state charges mining companies.

"In the first year that will be some $300 million going into the trust fund," he said.

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"Yet over the course of 10 years we estimate that the trust fund will accumulate $1.8 billion to be directly invested into coal communities, to rebuild TAFE, to retrain workers in new industries and emerging industries but also to build those industries in the community."

Mr Shoebridge said the government is only spending a "fraction" - around $50 million - of these royalties in coal communities.

"The Greens believe this wealth that’s been produced by coal communities needs to be invested back into those coal communities so that they can successfully transition," he said.

The Greens MP said coal had "about a 10-year timeframe" and a transition away from it was inevitable.

"But we also know there are communities across this state that are dependent on coal for jobs and economic activity," he said.

"We will not allow those communities to simply be turned into rustbuckets, to be hollowed out as we transition out of coal."