Senator VANSTONE (Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs)(10.55 p.m.) —That has not been done, and I do not believe it is necessary for it to be done because what we are seeking to put in legislation is perfectly clear: the 25 per cent limit. If you have a suggestion that somehow clause 2A subparagraph 3 does not provide that 25 per cent limit, we are happy to look at an amendment you might want to make to the amendment in order to put it in legislation. Equally, I say the same with respect to subparagraph 4.

One of the reasons we set this limit was, I believe, that without such a limit institutions would—as I think you suggested in your speech in the second reading debate we were happy to let them do—shift the loads around so that full fee paying students would be in the most expensive courses and the government funded students would be squashed out of other courses. It is precisely because of the very sharp minds of the university sector when dollars come before them, and the focus they have on how to get those dollars, that we believe these limits need to be put in.

If I went and asked them whether they were satisfied with this, it would not surprise me if a number of them said, `No, why don't you make it 33 per cent or 50 per cent?' They would seek a lot more flexibility because giving them that flexibility allows them to obviously get more. That is what they are primarily interested in.

We said in the very beginning, on 9 August, that we want Australian students to have the opportunity to invest in themselves, to take that chance if they want, and that these conditions would be there. All you are looking at now is, if you like, a concession on our part. I think it has been properly raised that people say, `You might say that now, but you might say differently next year.' It is nothing more than an acknowledgment of the intention of the government that we seek to put those critical aspects into legislation. The rest of the guidelines will stay as the guidelines that were the same under your government. The guidelines of setting fees vis-a-vis postgraduate courses were not disallowed. I did not notice your complaining then.