Clive Palmer party senator Glenn Lazarus caught plagiarising Wikipedia
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/clive-palmer-party-senator-glenn-lazarus-caught-plagia...
The brick with eyes lives up to his name, thick as a brick.... but that seems to the prerequisite for the PUP party members...
CLIVE Palmer’s Senator for Queensland Glenn Lazarus has been raiding Wikipedia pages about Queensland to tell voters all about the state he is meant to represent.
A personal website for the Palmer United Party Senator plagiarises more than 450 words “about Queensland’’ from Wikipedia to tell voters about the state’s history, industries and attractions.
One of the few exceptions to the plagiarism was some additions made to add Mr Palmer’s Coolum resorts to the state’s list of glittering tourist attractions.
The revelations came as Senator Lazarus, who has dodged media questions and interviews since beginning his term, refused to comment on the party’s leader’s inflammatory remarks about China.
Senator Lazarus – who is paid an annual base salary approaching $200,000 to represent Queensland – refused yesterday to respond to questions about Australia’s economic future, his plans for the state and his colleagues’ remarks.
While the Senator – known during his rugby career as “the brick with eyes’’ – is happy to stand at the edges of Mr Palmer’s press conferences, he has rarely stepped up to the microphones himself to answer questions.
Media were allowed into one of his constituent sessions at Mr Palmer’s Fairfax Festival Weekend, but were booted from the second and journalists were not permitted to ask him questions during the session they were allowed to attend.
The rookie senator’s website reproduces almost 500 words exactly as they appear on Queensland’s Wikipedia page, and features an image of a whale that a Google image search reveals has been used previously by others.
Among the many examples of lifted content is the passage: “(Queensland’s) primary industries include: bananas, pineapples, peanuts, a wide variety of other tropical and temperate fruit and vegetables, grain crops, wineries, cattle raising, cotton, sugar cane, wool and a mining industry including bauxite, coal, silver, lead, zinc, gold, and copper.”
Lists of tourist attractions are also copied without alteration, with the exception of one line.
The Wikipedia version reads: “On the Sunshine Coast there is UnderWater World at Mooloolaba and Australia Zoo near Beerwah/Glass House Mountains, home of Steve Irwin until his death in 2006”.
Senator Lazarus’ version begins the same sentence with: “On the Sunshine Coast there is Palmersaurus and Motorama at Palmer Coolum, UnderWater World at Mooloolaba …”
A separate portion dealing with the history of the Legislative Assembly appears to have been taken from a state government website.
Meanwhile, parts of the website dealing with the Senate and the role of Senators appear to have been lifted – almost word-for-word – from Independent Senator Nick Xenophon’s official site, which in turn seem to have been based on text featured on the Parliamentary Education Office’s website.
Certain passages on Senator Xenophon’s site – which are often reworked versions of lines from the parliamentary website – appear on Senator Lazarus’ site with identical wording and punctuation.
Senator Xenophon said yesterday he was “flattered” to be of assistance but unconcerned by the apparent mimicry.
The Courier-Mail yesterday put a list of questions to Senator Lazarus – dealing with a range of topics, including Mr Palmer and Senator Lambie’s controversial comments this week about China, the Budget and whether he believed a return to surplus was necessary.
No response was received, as was the case with questions relating to the alleged plagiarism on his website.
It is not clear whether Senator Lazarus himself or a staff member committed the plagiarism, given he refused to answer questions from The Courier Mail.
Text messages were also sent to Senator Lazarus alerting him to the queries, which were also emailed to a PUP media representative, an official PUP email and his personal parliamentary email address
