MANAGED investment schemes could be subject to tougher regulation in the wake of the collapse of Timbercorp and Great Southern.

Federal Corporate Governance Minister Nick Sherry said this week he'd already had discussions with Australian Securities and Investments Commission on the issue.

Speaking at a Senate Budget estimates hearing on the agriculture portfolio, Senator Sherry said he'd been looking at the corporate structures of MISs and found them to be "very complicated".

"This has led me to question some of the supervisory regimes in this area," he said.

But Senator Sherry said it was not possible to make decisions until the administrators had finished their work with Timbercorp and Great Southern.

An agriculture official told the hearing several departments were also looking at the policy implications of the MIS collapses. But he emphasised this was at a "preliminary stage".

The revelations came after the hearing was told the agriculture department would have to cut staffing levels by about 250 in response to budget cutbacks.

Agriculture department head Dr Conall O'Connell said department would achieve the cuts by relying on natural turnover and terminating its 60-strong graduate intake program.

He said the cuts stemmed from a budget cut of 1.2 per cent and the cessation of several programs, including the dairy adjustment scheme.

The Opposition seized on the revelations.

"No other agency has been belted like the department of agriculture," Liberal senator Richard Colbeck told the hearing.

Opposition spokesman for agriculture John Cobb said the Government should "hang its head in shame" that 60 university graduates were going to be left without careers.

But Senator Sherry accused the Opposition of "scare-mongering" and deliberately distorting budget cutbacks for agriculture.

There had been "some reductions" in a number of areas", "but nothing like the sort of scare-mongering press releases and comments that we have seen from a range of shadow ministers on this issue."