A world apart: geography, Australian quarantine, and the mother country

Smallpox Geographies: vaccination, borders and Indigenous peoples in Australia's coastal north

Australia's approach to its biosecurity and borders has always been two-pronged - quarantine first, vaccination second. This article asks what this combination looked like in practice by exploring two neglected smallpox vaccination campaigns directed towards Indigenous peoples in the early twentieth century. We argue these were important campaigns because they were the first two pre-emptive, rather than reactionary, vaccination programs directed towards First Nations people. Second, both episodes occurred in Australia's northern coastline, where the porous maritime geography and proximity to Southeast Asia posed a point of vulnerability for Australian health officials. While smallpox was never endemic, (though epidemic), in Australia, it was endemic at various times and places across Southeast Asia. This shifting spectre of smallpox along the northern coastline was made even more acute for state and federal health officials because of the existing polyethnic relationships, communities, and economies. By vaccinating Indigenous peoples in this smallpox geography, they were envisioned and embedded into a 'hygienic' border for the protection of white Australia, entwining the two-prongs as one approach. In this article, we place public health into a recent scholarship that has 'turned the map upside down' to re-spatialise Australia's history and geography to the north and its global connections, while demonstrating how particular coastlines and their connections were drawn into a national imaginary through a health lens.

Re-imagining world: From human health in the world to 'all-world health'

This article explores the concept of 'world' as it frequently appears across health studies; specifically largely humanistic and phenomenological variations in use of 'the world' and 'lifeworld' are considered as they have helped cast knowledge on health and care. Looking forward, it is argued that world might be reimagined post-humanistically and post-phenomenologically as a vital emergent material entity and property. This is a reimagination that pays dividends by drawing attention to all-world processes and productions, hence to 'all-world health'. On one level, all-world health involves consideration of the healths of all the world's material and biological entities (all parts of the world). On another level, all-world health involves understanding what an entity gains from its total surround as it moves through life (all parts of its world). Together these levels provide a more processual, relational and holistic understanding of health than that provided by traditional notions of human health states, determinants or meanings, and even by some environmental (ist) ideas on health. All-world health arguably provides a vision of interrelatedness on which greater unity, cooperation and care might be built.

Australian Quarantine Policy: From Centralization to Coordination with Mid-Pandemic COVID-19 Shifts

Combining a historical institutionalism approach with institutional isomorphism and punctuated equilibrium, this article analyzes quarantine policy change across 120 years of Australian quarantine history. By anchoring its analysis within specific time periods (the years before the Spanish flu, seven decades of inaction, and multiple post-1997 pandemic updates and responses), the authors highlight when and why policies did or did not change and how the constant push-and-pull between state and Commonwealth institutional ownership altered policy possibilities. The heart of the analysis showcases how Australia's successful COVID-19 response is a unique output of prior quarantine policies, institutional evolution, and mid-pandemic alterations of key national pandemic response plans.

Legal rights during pandemics: federalism, rights and public health laws--a view from Australia

Pandemic influenza will cause significant social and economic disruption. Legal frameworks can play an important role in clarifying the rights and duties of individuals, communities and governments for times of crisis. In addressing legal frameworks, there is a need for jurisdictional clarity between different levels of government in responding to public health emergencies. Public health laws are also informed by our understandings of rights and responsibilities for individuals and communities, and the balancing of public health and public freedoms. Consideration of these issues is an essential part of planning for pandemic influenza.