South Australian Opposition Leader Isobel Redmond has scored herself a two-out-of-10 for her comments about public sector job cuts.

The day after she issued a written statement to clarify her remarks on how many SA public sector workers needed to go, the Liberal leader conceded she would be guided by an audit commission the party would set up if it won the 2014 election.

Ms Redmond told ABC Radio her partyroom generally believed there were too many public servants, but there had not been a discussion of how many would go under a Liberal administration.

Ms Redmond had spoken less than a day earlier of axing one quarter of the SA public service.

But her statement issued a few hours later said it was not party policy to cut 20,000 jobs or more.

The Opposition Leader conceded it had not been her finest hour.

"I made an error, I'm not perfect and I'm honest enough to 'fess up at the first opportunity that I made an error," she said.

"And you know, the fact is that we haven't had any discussion in our partyroom about the size of the public service or any reductions that are necessary."

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 9 minutes 10 seconds 9 m Morning after: Isobel Redmond backtracks on her comments ( ABC Radio ) Download 4.2 MB

Incorrect

Ms Redmond said the figure she first gave had popped into her head.

"It was incorrect of me to say that because what popped into my head - and I have thousands of facts and figures in my head - but what popped into my head was the figure from what the public sector had been when we were last in government and I was wrong in saying that we were going to reduce it to that size," she said.

Premier Jay Weatherill said cutting such a large number of public sector employees would have a big impact on frontline services.

"There are only 27,000 people in admin and policy roles," he said.

"The rest are either in frontline services like teachers, nurses, police, doctors or they're in direct support services."

Business SA chief executive Nigel McBride said Ms Redmond's comments had been a distraction from the real issue, which was public sector productivity.

"Business SA is not anti-public sector, we're not anti-frontline, but there's just thousands of people who apparently aren't delivering those services and we've got to ask ourself - in a state that's just been downgraded (by ratings agencies) on the way to rust belt - can we afford this level (of public sector employment)?"

Leadership

Political commentator Clem Macintyre, from Adelaide University, was in no doubt the issue again put Ms Redmond's leadership under scrutiny.

"There's been much speculation about whether or not she'll make it through to the end of the year. This is certainly not helping her cause in any way," he said.

Ms Redmond said she did not think her leadership had been damaged by her gaffe on the number of job cuts.

"I think that the only way to avoid making mistakes is to do nothing," she said.

"I don't think I make a lot of mistakes but this is clearly one.

"I've come out pretty quickly and said mistake and owned up to it. I think the partyroom accepts that."