Immigration and Health: Law and Regulation in Australia, 1901-1958

Abstract

Between 1901 and 1958, immigrants and other entrants to the Commonwealth of Australia were subject to health restrictions in three main areas: infectious or communicable diseases; mental illness; and a range of chronic, non-communicable diseases. These restrictions were enacted in two key pieces of Commonwealth legislation, namely, the Immigration (Restriction) Act 1901 (Cwlth), which was repealed in 1958, and the Quarantine Act 1908 (Cwlth). In their own terms, these complementary statutes had three broad objectives: to safeguard the Australian population from the introduction or spread of communicable diseases; to minimise the financial burden posed by immigrants suffering from chronic mental or physical illnesses; and to protect the access of Australian citizens to public or charitable health care facilities or institutions, which might otherwise be compromised by immigrants with chronic mental or physical illness. Elsewhere, Bashford has interpreted these regulations, laws and policies as one aspect of Australian nationalism, of race-based and eugenic population management in the period, as well as part of an 'international hygiene' of the first half of the twentieth century.1 This article, however, is intended to be descriptive rather than interpretative, a research resource rather than a historiographical intervention. It makes available to researchers in Australian medical and legal history a comprehensive chronology of the changes in law and policy, and a listing of restricted diseases and conditions up until 1958, the year the Immigration Act was repealed.2 Such a chronology is not available elsewhere. The article is divided into three sections, the first of which outlines general information about the immigration and quarantine acts and regulations between 1901 and 1958, the government departments that administered them, their purpose, scope and structure, and a description of the health restrictions they enacted. The second section details the types of diseases and medical conditions that were restricted or designated as notifiable under each of the acts. These are generally divided in the legislation, and are discussed in this article according to three main categories: A. Infectious or Communicable Diseases; B. Mental