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IT IS no secret that the state government must hold onto its marginal seats in the Greater Adelaide area to retain office at this weekend's election.

Labor holds 11 seats by margins of less than 5 per cent on a two-party preferred basis and the Liberal Party needs to win six of them to take government in its own right.

Suburban seats, such as Hartley (with a margin of 0.5pc), Elder (1.7pc) and Ashford (1.5pc) will be hot battlegrounds, but so too will the peri-urban a of Light and Mawson, held by Labor incumbents Tony Piccolo (4.2pc) and Leon Bignell (4.9pc) respectively.

Both electorates bucked the trend at the 2010 election by swinging towards Labor and, in an effort to tackle this, the Liberals promised Mawson voters a $500,000 wine trail to join McLaren Vale with Clare, and a 100,000-person expansion of the town of Roseworthy in Light.

Piccolo says the expansion of Roseworthy will be one of the biggest issues for his electorate at the election.

"If people want 100,000 people to be housed in Roseworthy, which is the equivalent of Elizabeth and Salisbury combined and will take up valuable farming land, they'll vote Liberal," Piccolo said.

"If they don't want that, they'll vote for me locally."

Labor was opposed to 100,000 people being relocated to Roseworthy, but it would support a "modest expansion of the township to enable enough critical mass to make it a viable community".

Liberal candidate for Light Cosie Costa believes cost of living is the single greatest issue for the electorate.

Raised on an almond orchard in the area before becoming a diesel mechanic and establishing his own mechanical repairs business that expanded into weighing systems, he says people are feeling the cost of living.

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Liberals target tight peri-urban seats