Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Minister, what action is Australia taking to ensure proper reporting of avian influenza outbreaks in our region? Minister, are there any alternative views?

Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Fisher for his interest in avian flu. I am aware of a report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation that some Asia-Pacific countries are underreporting cases of the deadly avian flu. We are keen that all countries in the region report cases quickly and accurately. We have been working since 2001 within APEC to assist: we have been training vets and animal health officials to improve their capacity to diagnose avian flu, we have been organising public meetings in villages and towns on proper handling procedures for livestock and poultry, we have been training district health administrators on what to do if there are outbreaks of avian flu and we have been providing antiviral medicines to Indonesia to help with avian flu outbreaks—and so the list goes on. We have been extremely active in this area. It is something we are cautious and concerned about.

The honourable member for Fisher asked if there were any alternatives. I explained yesterday that, in a sense, there are not any alternatives. The member for Griffith, who has been vocal on this issue, has done something that we can only regard as extremely flattering, and that is to plagiarise our words—the words of the Minister for Health and Ageing—and the words of international organisations. Yesterday the member for Griffith told the parliament that he had lifted, word for word, sentences from other sources and had not attributed them. He said, though, that he had only lifted seven paragraphs. This is, by the way, for the interest of the House, in an article that is 13 paragraphs long and is signed ‘Kevin Rudd’.

The member for Griffith has committed what in academia is certainly a very serious offence. I wondered what the penalty would be for a student of—to use the name of the member’s own electorate—Griffith University if that student were found to have plagiarised sentences and paragraphs without attributing them. The penalty at Griffith University is ‘a fail grade for the course in which academic misconduct has occurred’. So, when it comes to avian flu, the great plagiariser is most certainly going to get a fail.