Libs to pay price for budget: SA treasurer

The federal government and their state Liberal Party colleagues will "pay the price" for ignoring South Australia in the budget, the state's Labor treasurer says.

Tom Koutsantonis says of the $70 billion allocated for infrastructure projects across the country, no new money will go to SA for the first time he can recall.

"This is a deliberate policy. They have deliberately excluded South Australia from new infrastructure spending," he told reporters in Adelaide on Wednesday.

He said South Australians would judge the federal government on the lack of funds allocated to the state and they will "pay a price a price for it".

"If they're prepared to pass over us and they're not concerned about South Australians, South Australians will return that favour to the Liberal Party," he said.

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon was also critical of infrastructure spending in the budget, believing SA had missed out on about $2 billion.

"Make no mistake about it, the arithmatic, the maths stacks up" he said.

"Here we have a situation where South Australia is being unambiguously, unequivocally dudded by the federal government."

But Opposition Leader Steven Marshall said there was "plenty" in the budget for SA, including funding for Australia's first proton beam therapy centre in Adelaide and more money for veterans and people undergoing employment transition.

Mr Marshall said Mr Koutsantonis and Premier Jay Weatherill simply wanted to whinge.

"They are whingers in chief rather than people that are getting on, putting the interests of the people of SA first," he told reporters.

Federal Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said the SA government should be more constructive and try to claim its fair share of a new national rail fund.

"If they took a constructive approach instead of just whingeing and not even reading the budget papers properly, they would see the $10 billion new allocation in a national rail program," he told ABC radio on Wednesday.

"They would see that there's an opportunity to get additional funding towards rail infrastructure into South Australia."

But SA Transport Minister Stephen Mullighan said other projects, like Perth's Metronet, had been offered rail funds without going to such lengths.

The Civil Contractors Federation of SA said the state had been "short changed" and also believed that could impact on the Liberals' chances of winning the 2018 state election.

"Less than a year out from a state election, last night's budget could well come back to haunt the SA Liberal opposition," federation chief executive Phil Sutherland said.