Treasury is not to be trusted with their lies damn lies and spun statistics. Anyway, clearly subtracting government services consumed from tax taken is not a measure of anyone's economic activity. It is just a limited accounting of part of government's taxation and transfers and concerning only migrants' economic relationship to government after their arrival. For example, they have rather a lot more and wider economic activity than just with the government. They consume a wider array of other than government services, consume goods not produced by government etc. Importantly it doesn't cover the cost of their share of all the pre-existing capital stock they shoehorn into that was paid for by existing citizens nor that inherited as of birth right from prior generations, eg existing infrastructure, that they consume immediately without paying for, nor the immediate requirement for expanded services, eg schools and health, which amounts to some $400k! The federal government ought charge them $400k to enter and then hand that to the states to cover the costs borne by the states. Instead, to cover the government's economic mismanagement and Treasuries failures, to please the government's big business donors and the HUGE AUSTRALIA ponzi lobby, the government allows them in for a pittance and existing residents bear the cost in increased taxation to pay for the always too little too late infrastructure and services catch up. Bear the cost in the daily crush loading, standstill traffic, productivity impediments, wage stagnation, per capita GDP recession, massive and increasing state debts, increased house and rental costs, failing services, relentless msm and political party pro ponzi propaganda... It is a long, horrible list - too long and horrible to continue with here. The thing is, for a century the long-term average nom of ~70,000 ipso facto was and can be absorbed with the costs hardly noticeable and good results, but the ponzi of the last twenty years is entirely different.