The incoming WA Labor government is already warning West Australians the state's record debt pile could take decades to overcome.
The battle over who voters wanted to run the state's economy was won by Labor on Saturday after a bitter election campaign in which the opposition accused the government of wasting the riches of the now-ended mining boom.
The Liberals countered that Labor's election promises were full of fake funding sources and could not be paid for.
The state's deficit is $3.3 billion this year, while debt is tipped to hit $41 billion by 2020, with the man who will likely be the state's new treasurer saying it won't be paid down by the time of the next state election in 2021.
"The debt issue is obviously going to be a long term issue to deal with," Ben Wyatt told ABC radio on Monday.
He said asset sales, as proposed by the Barnett government with the part-privatisation of Western Power, was not the answer to the problem.
He said Labor would focus on cutting spending in the general government sector - including in the public service - where most of the debt was being generated.
The Barnett government, he said, had allowed recurrent spending in the government sector to get out of control and become permanent during the mining boom, a mistake the McGowan government would not repeat.
"The point is to ensure that if that happens again (a mining boom) that revenue won't become part of recurrent government spending and be used to offset debt," Mr Wyatt said.
He said Labor had responsibly not put a time-frame on paying down debt.
"We've seen, particularly at a federal level, various treasurers say we will be back to surplus at this point and we've seen how that unwound rather embarrassingly for various treasurers," Mr Wyatt said.
Mr Wyatt released a heavily criticised debt reduction plan during the campaign, involving setting aside 50 per cent of iron ore royalties, but only after WA's GST share returned above 65 cents in the dollar and the price of iron ore reached $85 a tonne.
WA's GST return is currently 30 cents, while iron ore is expected to drop to $50 a tonne by the end of the year.
The Labor government is also relying on a couple of unknowns to meet its $5 billion in promises, such as redirecting more than $1 billion in federal funding from the Perth Freight Link.
New Premier Mark McGowan is due to meet the Department of Premier and Cabinet and Treasury on Monday for briefings.
