One year ago Jack Snelling delivered the 2012-13 State Budget.

InDaily’s analysis was headlined: “It’ll be OK – later – we hope.” At 3pm today our headline may well be “bugger”.

The Snelling budget accepted the fact of short-term reduced growth in GST revenues and property taxes, but its forecasts were based on a swift turnaround in fortunes.

That hasn’t happened and Snelling’s replacement as Treasurer, Premier Jay Weatherill, will bring down his first Budget in an even worse economic climate.

The Weatherill Budget will show the largest net debt in the state’s history.

Check InDaily at 3pm for full coverage of today’s State Budget.

The size of the deficit for the coming Budget year will also be of interest, given Weatherill is unlikely to cut expenditure significantly some 300 days from an election.

Raising extra revenue is also risky in these pre-election times, especially after last year’s plundering of the taxpayer’s purses when water prices went up 25 per cent along with increases in some 2000 state fees and charges and a second consecutive jump in car rego and licence fees.

Debt is a ballooning problem for this Government and if they don’t address it in the forward estimates years, it will be an easy call for the Opposition to label the State Government as bad economic managers.

In 2007 the State owed nothing. Yet by 2010 we owed $1.58 billion, rising to $3.33 billion in 2011 and $4.28 billion in 2012.

Last year’s Budget estimated the debt would rise to $8.7 billion in 2016.

Even Tom Waterhouse wouldn’t bet that the figure has come down.

The last two Budgets have made a fundamental error.

Estimates for the following years were based on a turnaround in the global and local economies.

It didn’t happen and in many respects it’s got worse.

Retail, manufacturing, construction and real estate are all in the doldrums.

State economic growth has contracted in the first three quarters of this financial year.

“Cyclical factors have contributed to the fall in revenues and it is anticipated that taxation and GST revenues will improve over the forward estimates as domestic and international economic conditions improve, mining activity expands, the employment outlook becomes more positive and household confidence grows,” the Budget papers said last year.

That prediction was pure fantasy.

Last year the Budget papers deferred rail electrification, the long-awaited QEH Stage Three update, the West Lakes and Outer Harbour tram lines and other major projects.

It’s a fair bet those projects will now be deferred so far that the only person who might still believe they are real has also backed Greater Western Sydney to win this year’s AFL premiership.

One year ago, Jack Snelling opened his Budget speech with the now infamous words; “South Australia will be a very different place in a few years. The expanded Olympic Dam mine — the largest open pit mine in the world — will be operating, along with dozens of others, exporting copper, gold and uranium to a region hungry for our resources.”

Unbeknown to the Treasurer that future prosperity disappeared down an empty mine shaft last August.

Just how Jay Weatherill deals with reality will be known later today; but it won’t be pretty.

Check InDaily at 3pm today for full coverage of today’s State Budget.