Julie Bishop and Plagiarism

Bishop in new plagiarism episode | The Australian

Bishop in new plagiarism episode


John Lyons | October 27, 2008

DEPUTY Liberal leader Julie Bishop is embroiled in her second plagiarism controversy in a month, last night telephoning a New Zealand businessman to apologise that his words have appeared in a new book under her name without attribution.

Some parts of Ms Bishop's essay are lifted word-for-word from a speech the businessman made in 1999 and, in other parts, words have been substituted or changed slightly.

It is an embarrassment for Ms Bishop and the publishers, Melbourne University Press, that one of the major essays in a book about the future of the Liberal Party was written in part nine years ago by New Zealand businessman Roger Kerr.

For example, Mr Kerr had stated as a fact that in competitive labour markets firms compete for the services of employees.

But Ms Bishop's essay changes this to insert that the Liberal Party believes this.

In late September, Ms Bishop was accused of plagiarism for lifting material from The Wall Street Journal for a speech.

The new controversy involves her contribution to Liberals and Power: The Road Ahead, a new book edited by academic Peter van Onselen to be published this week.

Ironically, after the Wall Street Journal controversy, Dr van Onselen wrote in The Australian that if one of his students had done what Ms Bishop had done he would have failed them.

Last night, Dr van Onselen said: "Whilst I understand how political offices work, it is still disappointing to learn that Julie didn't see fit to write herself a chapter in a book that is meant to be about ideas for the future of the Liberal Party."

Ms Bishop's chief of staff, Murray Hansen, yesterday telephoned The Australian to claim "100 per cent responsibility" for the plagiarism.

He said he had written the essay and forgotten to send footnotes in time for publication.

Mr Hansen said Ms Bishop had been aware he was drawing on the 1999 speech by Mr Kerr, then head of New Zealand's business roundtable. "She was aware that I was drawing on that material, but she would not have known in detail how much material I was taking across," he said.

Asked if this made her look like a repeat plagiarist, Mr Hansen said: "Never, ever has she plagiarised other people's work."

Asked how footnotes could have given credit for words that are not in quotation marks in Ms Bishop's essay but blended through, he said: "I knocked it together very quickly. If I'd formatted it and put direct quotes, it would have alerted her much more quickly to the fact that I was taking large chunks out of someone else's ideas and speech."

In relation to the Wall Street Journal episode in late September in which part of a speech she gave was lifted directly from the newspaper, he said: "That was her first or second day as Opposition treasurer, we had no staff as shadow treasurer and staff in another office threw a heap of material together and because of the rush, she read it out."

Mr Hansen said Ms Bishop had asked him to contact the publisher with footnotes for the new book before the controversy over the the Wall Street Journal material, but once that had occurred she asked him again had he done so. He said he told her he had forgotten and that to say she was unhappy when she heard that "would be the understatement of the decade".

Of the new book, Mr Hansen said: "I have probably used somewhere between six and eight sentences of direct quotes (and) in other places I have referred to some of his ideas." Some parts of Ms Bishop's essay are lifted word-for-word. Others have been changed slightly.

For example, where the businessman wrote that New Zealand had "deregulated employment contracting and removed most of the structures", Ms Bishop's essay changes this to "deregulated employment contracting, removed the structures".

Mr Kerr delivered his speech, Success and Failures of Labour Market reform in New Zealand, at the Dublin economic workshop in 1999.

While Mr Kerr used the word "upheld", this has been changed to "supported" in Ms Bishop's essay.

In one part of her essay, Ms Bishop inserted "the Liberal Party" as believing something that Mr Kerr had stated as his own opinion.

Mr Kerr wrote: "Similarly, in competitive labour markets, firms compete with one another for the services of employees, and wages and other conditions of employment are set through voluntary exchanges that yield mutual gains." Ms Bishop's essay says: "In contrast, the Liberal Party understands that in competitive modern labour markets, business compete with each other for the services of employees ... wages and conditions of employment can be set through voluntary exchanges that yield mutual gains."

In the introduction to the book, Dr van Onselen, who writes a column for The Weekend Australian, says that while Malcolm Turnbull was asked to write, he "ultimately" declined. It is understood the Opposition Leader declined after he spoke heatedly to Dr van Onselen.

When asked about this yesterday, Dr van Onselen said: "Maybe because I live in the sheltered world of academia I'm just not used to be being spoken to like that."
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