Truth is the first casualty of war. And of budgets, it would seem. Especially in an era of fake news and alternative facts.

As commuters headed home after work yesterday, the SA Government was waiting at Adelaide Railway Station, distributing phony newspapers that spruik its latest state budget.

The Express, as it was called, was indeed marked as a "publication of the Government of South Australia", but that has not stopped some eyebrows being raised over the appropriateness of the new tactic.

The Express, of course, does not contain the feverish bile that typified Nazi Germany's Volkischer Beobachter, or the Soviet Union's Pravda.

But veteran columnist and former deputy editor of The Advertiser, Rex Jory, believes it is nevertheless deceptive.

"This is just straight propaganda," he said.

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"It is clearly sanitised information. It is all positive — there are no negatives in it — and it denies the Opposition, the alternate government if you like, any say at all.

"I don't know what the budget for this promotional material is, or what department is paying for it. But you can bet it won't be cheap."

Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis defended the "newspaper", denying it was anything sinister.

"It's no different from any other piece of informational material we put out," he said.

"We put it on newspaper paper so people can read it easily on the train home."

'It will become a propaganda weapon' for both parties

But Jory said the newspaper format potentially made it more difficult for readers to separate fact from spin.

"Instead of just being a promotional pamphlet, it looks like a newspaper. People are used to reading newspapers in a quite different way than they read advertising material," he said.

"If they think it's a newspaper as they're getting on the tram or the bus or the train, they're likely to sit down and read it and absorb it more than they would [reading] a pamphlet."

Jory fears it sets a precedent, with future governments likely to follow suit.

"It will become a rolling propaganda weapon for both political parties," he said.

"Let's say the Liberals win the next election — they have the absolute right to do the same thing."

With nine months to go before the next state election, the phony war is well and truly underway.