Pleas from West Australia for a bigger slice of the GST pie to counter slumping iron ore price has been slapped down by Victoria.

WA Treasurer Mike Nahan has welcomed a plan to stop his state’s GST share dropping below 38 per cent as a good start, but not enough.

Federal finance minister Mathias Cormann proposed the plan to freeze the state’s distribution at 37.6 cents in the dollar, rather than cutting it to 29.9 cents in 2015/16.

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“If that happens, it’s a win, it sets a precedent that there’s a floor, and the floor might be inadequate but we will build on that,” Dr Nahan told Fairfax radio on Monday.

The freeze, expected to boost WA’s coffers by about $500 million, has been criticised as “a bit rich” by Victorian premier Daniel Andrews.

Stop spending like “drunken sailors” before asking other states for more, Mr Andrews said.

“It’s not for us to build hospitals and schools in WA, where they dig money out of the ground. They’ve had a very good run for a very long time,” he told reporters on Monday.

“They are spending like drunken sailors and they want Victorians to help them pay for it.”

The WA Treasurer has insisted his state deserves its “fair share”.

“We deserve to get our fair share back — that’s it.”

But the state’s opposition treasury spokesman Ben Wyatt said the current Liberal government in WA had failed to make its case for more GST effectively.