Standing beside the rookie state Liberal leader, Steven Marshall, Mr Abbott announced about $100 million would be spent in the state to build new infrastructure to support the drones, creating 100 new jobs.

The South Australian Premier, Labor's Jay Weatherill, was not invited to the ceremony at the Edinburgh Air Base.

The base for the new drones is in Adelaide's northern suburbs, a Labor stronghold to be hit hard by Holden's recent decision to end car manufacturing.

Mr Weatherill, who said his state's Defence SA organisation had been working hard to win the drones contract, was left at the other side of Adelaide announcing a new road link to ease congestion in the city.

With Saturday's election appearing likely to herald a change of government to the Liberals, Mr Weatherill accused the Opposition Leader of planning to turn South Australia into a ''branch office for Tony Abbott''.

He said Mr Marshall had been dodging the media and the public since the start of the election campaign. If Mr Marshall won the election, he would work with Mr Abbott to dismantle Medicare, cut funding for education and reduce award rates for workers, according to Mr Weatherill.

Mr Abbott returned fire on Mr Marshall's behalf. He said the whole basis for Mr Wetherill's campaign was ''to have a fight with the Commonwealth''.

''I want someone as premier who wants to work co-operatively with the Commonwealth,'' he said.

It is the second time in a week Mr Abbott has visited Adelaide to support Mr Marshall, who is a first-term Liberal MP and has been Liberal leader for only 13 months.

At last weekend's Liberal campaign launch, Mr Abbott reached for a grand historical reference to portray Mr Marshall as South Australia's saviour in the making.

''Let me say that the Marshall Plan will do at least as much for this state of South Australia as a different Marshall Plan did for postwar Europe,'' he said, referring to the massive four-year effort by the United States to rebuild Europe after World War II.

With the latest Australia-wide unemployment figure stable at 6 per cent on Thursday, South Australia's unemployment rate rose from 6.6 per cent to 6.7 per cent.

But Mr Weatherill said his state had created 6000 jobs in February alone - more than the entire period of the previous Liberal government. Labor has been in power in South Australia for 12 years.

The number of Triton surveillance drones to be purchased for the RAAF - and expected to be used to detect asylum-seeker boats among other border protection and defence tasks - has not been announced. The cost has been estimated to range from $1 billion to $3 billion.

Federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is not expected to visit South Australia before Saturday's election.