The WA treasurer appears to have lost any hope his calls to change the GST carve-up will be heeded, declaring "we're on our own" after handing down the worst budget in the state's history.
While Mike Nahan noted WA's GST share would increase in coming years, given the Commonwealth Grants Commission calculation lags three years behind current economic conditions, he still labelled the system "broken" and "outrageous".
"I went to Canberra for help ... we're on our own here. We still whinge at Canberra on other issues but we're on our own," Dr Nahan told a business briefing on Friday.
"Put crudely, we're getting screwed. They must hate us there. We're going to have to have a West Australian go there and he's going to have to be a real bastard."
He rejected the opposition's repeated critiques that the state had "blown the boom", saying he had no choice but to spend big on infrastructure and services - and public sector wages - when the population surged on the back of a buoyant resources sector.
"We just ran out of people," he said.
"We had to invest heavily and we did."
The WA government is now funnelling millions of dollars into the defence shipbuilding, agriculture and food sectors in a bid to diversify the economy.
"If we went into a hiatus in investing, not only would we not create as many jobs, particularly in this low-employment, low-cost period, but we'd be under baking, underdoing the economy of the future," Dr Nahan said.
WA is currently the only Australian jurisdiction in deficit, with debt forecast to balloon to $40.2 billion in 2019-20.
Premier Colin Barnett said this financial year's debt of $27.8 billion was manageable and did not represent an economic crisis for the state.
