Ms MACKLIN (2:42 PM) —My question is again to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, are you aware that up-front fees for a degree in veterinary science at Sydney University already cost students $113,000? How can you say that it is reckless to claim degrees will cost up to $100,000 if your government deregulates fees, when up-front fees can already be in excess of $100,000? Is it not true that $100,000-degrees are already a reality for some students, and that you are considering making it a reality for many more students?

Mr HOWARD (Prime Minister) —As always, in relation to the particular fees, the particular course and the particular university, I will check the facts before responding further. But I can tell the member for Jagajaga—and, indeed, I think the House will be interested to know—that there is something I do know very specifically about fees and that is that yesterday the Victorian minister for education announced full fee paying degrees with no loan scheme for TAFE degrees in Victoria. My recollection may be failing me, but I think the education minister in question is called Lynne Kosky, and I think the government in power there is a L-A-B-O-R government. I do not know what commitments were made before that government was elected, and I do not know whether the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has taken Lynne Kosky to task for breaching solidarity with the national comrades, but this is an illustration of this sort of mindless, aimless negative opposition. You have had seven months now to begin to get your act together. Barry Jones was terribly confused and muddled, but, God, he had a sort of a lovable honestly. He was one of the real characters of the Australian Labor Party. It is amazing; the passage of time makes you a little bit fonder and a little bit more charitable towards some of these people. But I was always charitable. Barry always used to try and encourage even more voracious reading habits in me. I remember he gave me a copy of War and Peace one day. He said, `I want to make absolutely certain that you re-read this, because it is the greatest book that I have ever read.'

When Barry Jones speaks, most of us stop and listen. Sometimes it is hard to work out what he is saying, but you could definitely work out what he was saying this morning in the Australian; there was nothing confused about that. He said that the Labor Party had lost its way. The Labor Party has lost its way because it does not stand for anything anymore. Give me a party that stands for something, like the old-fashioned Labor Party, which stood fair and square for the values of the Australian working class and was a group of men and women who really wanted to bring about social change. But do not give me this godforsaken middle-class mob who are so mindless and opportunistic that they will oppose anything put up by a duly elected democratic government.