The Weatherill Government will bolster the minimum participation of South Australian firms in state projects, with Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis saying he would rather spend money employing more local workers than increasing the scale of infrastructure builds.

From next month, the minimum weighting for “local jobs” in Government tender evaluations will increase from the current five to 10 per cent, and to 15 per cent for Government contracts worth more than $220,000.

That weighting increases again to 20 per cent for projects under the $93 million Northern Adelaide infrastructure spend detailed in the state budget, which include school upgrades, public housing and a new Gawler East Collector Link Road.

“It’s a recognition that we’re going through a once in a generation structural change in the north,” Koutsantonis told InDaily.

The Treasurer said the tender process for the South Road “Torrens to Torrens” upgrade stipulated 10 per cent of the work must go to local firms, and the successful T2T Alliance consortium ultimately committed to a 90 per cent local employment component. He hopes further increasing the minimum weighting will further exponentially increase the employment outcome.

“We’re getting very good value for money in our tendering, so now is an absolutely opportune time to increase local people working in our procurement, while we’re getting these good outcomes in our tender processes,” he said.

He said the Government was “leveraging our investment” to create local employment opportunities.

“If you’ve budgeted for a spend on an infrastructure program and it’s come in cheaper, you can increase the scale of the project or employ more South Australians … and quite frankly I’d prefer to employ more South Australians,” he said.

“It’s a policy decision.”

He said Government had found savings on infrastructure projects because of the broader economic downturn, with “tenders coming in under what we’ve budgeted for”, but conceded that increasing local participation could be a more expensive option.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s more expensive, but there’s always the risk of that, no doubt,” he said.

“We’re trying to make sure local workers are getting their fair share of the work, and the reality is most states are attempting to leverage their procurement to incentivise local work.

“I don’t want to put up walls around our borders, and say ‘only South Australians are getting our jobs’ – that’s unsustainable, and there’ll be retaliation around the country – but enough to give them a competitive advantage.”

He said firms from states such as New South Wales and Victoria have an “unfair competitive advantage” because they operate on a larger scale, and “what this does is level the playing field”.

But he conceded there was no guarantee creating a special case for northern projects would bolster employment in the northern suburbs.

“I accept that this is going to give employment opportunities to the entire state, not just people in the north,” he said.

“But as we’re gearing up for infrastructure projects, it makes intuitive sense that a lot of our employment will come from that local area.”