QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Senator WONG (South Australia—Minister for Foreign Affairs and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (15:21): I didn't hear some of the question because of the interjections, but I assume you were talking about limited recourse borrowing arrangements. I think you and I spoke about this yesterday or the day before, Senator. I made the point that less than 10 per cent of self-managed super funds have one of these arrangements for residential property and, of course, existing arrangements will be unaffected.

I think I may have also made the point that limited recourse borrowing arrangements are less than one per cent of total residential property borrowing and less than half a per cent of new— The PRESIDENT: Senator Bragg. Senator Bragg: I have a point of order on relevance. The question was very clear in seeking whether the minister was aware that industry says that up to 30 per cent of new pre-sales can be supported by SMSFs.

The PRESIDENT: Senator Bragg, the minister is being relevant to your question. Senator WONG: Senator, I was giving you the percentages that I'm advised about total residential property borrowing and new residential borrowing. I was also going to make the point that only about 4,000 new self-managed super fund borrowing arrangements occur each year on average.

I know, because you can't actually defend the position you have, you're interested in having another argument and trying to make this a much larger issue than I think these statistics demonstrate that it is. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT: Senator Bragg, second supplementary?