Plagiarism: the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.
The fact that more worthy contenders were passed over — the works of Matthiessen et al, McCabe, and Maagerø et al — suggests either that theoretical competence and intellectual integrity were not high on the list of criteria for determining the winner, or that the judges lacked the knowledge and ability to apply these criteria to the works submitted for the prize.
All in all, if this first award is any indication, the MAK Halliday Prize has been established by the Sydney-based members of ASFLA merely to confer the prestige status of 'Halliday' on themselves. This conclusion is supported by the fact that ASFLA chose a judging committee that was mostly composed of educationalists affiliated with Martin's pedagogy, rather than experts on SFL theory, and the fact that the only nominee from Sydney-based members of ASFLA was the work that just happened to be awarded the prize — at an ASFLA conference.
