The Bureau of Statistics calculates how much tourists spend when they come to Australia and how much Australians spend when they go overseas. Normally the incoming tourists spend more but that has changed dramatically.
In the last September quarter, for the first time Australians going overseas spent $254 million more than their incoming counterparts. For 2010 as a whole, a net $7.9 billion of tourism consumption was spent in Australia and this fell to $2.1 billion in 2011.
Retail trade rose by 2.4% cent in nominal terms in 2011, well below the decade average growth rate of 5.5%. But if the net outflow of spending had been channeled solely into the retail sector, the growth rate would have been around 4.8%.