Here's the easy way to spin this story for maximum impact: "Iron ore, for years Australia's biggest export earner, has crashed and is no longer our export king."

That's true. Well, sort of.

Alternatively, you could apply positive spin: "Australia's high-value services exports, led by tourism and education, have overtaken iron ore to become our biggest foreign exchange earners. Services exports now are worth more than coal and LNG combined."

And that's true, too, as shown by the accompanying graph lifted from a speech by Reserve Bank assistant governor, Christopher Kent.

The graph shows quarterly figures with Kent observing that exports of services were worth about $60 billion in 2014 and, at current prices, were a touch higher than iron ore at the end of last year.

The growth of services exports is a very fine thing, especially when much of that growth period included a strong and rising Australian dollar. But the graph also puts the "crash" in the contribution of iron ore and coal to our export income in perspective.

Yes, after lightning-fast spikes to stratospheric, undreamt-of levels, our two biggest mining exports have fallen back to be merely extremely rich sources of foreign exchange.

The graph doesn't include the impact of the latest fall in iron ore prices, but it also doesn't include the much greater volume being produced and the weaker Australian dollar – a combination that alleviates much of the price effect on export income. February shipments from Port Hedland were 42 per cent higher than the same month last year.

Somewhere between the bad news/good news spin is this reading: Australia's export earners are doing quite nicely with indications that the economy is starting to rebalance, as it must. Kent – the RBA's assistant governor economic – said our services export industries should benefit from further strong growth of demand from Asia as many more households there gain a foothold in the middle class.

"While Australia has many strengths in these service industries, our comparative advantage here is perhaps not as obvious as it is in mining and agriculture, which benefit from our substantial endowments of natural resources." he said. "This means that we will need to continue to work hard to maintain competitiveness in these global markets."

Well no-one ever said life was meant to be easy, or at least not for long.