Western Australia would be staring down the barrel of a staggering $86 billion debt in nine years if the state government's drastic cost-cutting plan wasn't implemented, budget figures show.
And if its Fiscal Action Plan is successfully executed, the once-boom state will actually improve its credit rating with Standard & Poor's to AAA with a stable outlook.
WA's outlook slipped from stable to negative in October last year, with S&P blaming the state's reliance on mining, and overly optimistic budget forecasts for commodity prices and foreign exchange rates.
It said at the time there was a one-in-three chance of a rating downgrade within two years.
On Thursday, after the 2013/14 budget was handed down, S&P said that risk remained if the budgetary performance of the non-financial public sector was significantly weaker than expected.
Treasurer Troy Buswell conceded the estimated $47.3 billion debt now facing WA in 2022/23 - assuming his action plan works - was still a nasty figure, rising from almost $22 billion in 2013/14.
"The $87 billion in the Treasury estimate is what would have happened if we hadn't made the change yesterday - but the $47 (billion) is a fair point," he told ABC radio on Friday.
"Debt is an issue we have to deal with, and I don't think we have seen the end of the upswing in debt.
"We need to do more work with Treasury to see how we deal with that over a longer term horizon."
Mr Buswell spent much of the day defending the state's mounting liabilities and largely debt-funded public transport plans.
"When we borrow money every cent goes to delivering infrastructure," he said.
" ... a lot of that infrastructure is long term, multi-generational infrastructure which will serve the state for decades and possibly into the next century."
He also fielded anger over halving the residential solar power feed-in tariff rate - reneging on a 10-year undertaking to households - and a decision to remove free parking at suburban train stations from July 2014, despite encouraging commuters to "park and ride" in a bid to reduce growing road congestion.
Opposition Leader Mark McGowan described the solar backflip as another "broken promise".
He labelled the parking fees an unfair slug to ordinary workers and took great umbrage at a near 80 per cent slashing of the Royalties for Regions-funded Country Local Government Fund to pay for the Liberal-created "debt monster".
