Sydney - HIV infection rates have crept up in Australia because funding for spreading the safe-sex message has fallen, a report released Wednesday said.

There were 27,331 HIV cases and 10,230 cases of full-blown AIDS reported in the year to December 2007 - a 50-per-cent increase on the rate eight years earlier, the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research report said.

While homosexual men still account for the bulk of new cases, the incidence among heterosexual men is rising. One reason given is that cashed-up miners in Western Australia and in Queensland on the opposite coast are holidaying abroad and returning with infections picked up in Asia.

But the biggest influence is likely to be a cut in funding for advertising campaigns urging the sexually active to guard against HIV.

Australia led the world in putting out the safe-sex message in the 1980s but as the epidemic has eased the money for continuing the campaign has dried up. dpa