Australia's net foreign debt has expanded beyond $1 trillion for the first time on record.

Net foreign debt in the December quarter came in at $1,006 billion — an increase of 2.8 per cent on the previous quarter's $971 billion.

Figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics also show that the quarterly current account deficit has blown out to $21.1 billion, the second deepest deficit since the data was first recorded in 1959.

The December quarter deficit widened 12 per cent from the $18.8 billion deficit reported in the September quarter.

It is only $49 million less than the largest seasonally adjusted deficit, recorded in the June quarter last year.

The crash in commodity prices drove exports down by 4.9 per cent, outweighing the 0.8 per cent in imports.

Exports of non-rural goods — principally resources — fell by $2.7 billion to $45.5 billion on the back a 6 per cent slide in prices.

The value of iron ore and mineral exports fell by 10 per cent, while export volumes were down 3 per cent.

Coal exports fell by a similar amount.

Exports of rural goods rose 5 per cent, with a 10 per cent increase in volumes outweighing a 5 per cent fall in prices.

The values of imports remained steady, with a 10.3 per cent fall in fuel prices for the quarter negating a rise in volumes.

The result drove Australian terms of trade — the ratio of export prices to import prices, or the amount of import goods an economy can purchase per unit of export goods — was down another 3 per cent.

This is a decade low and more than 30 per cent below the peak reached in 2011.