Inside truths: 'truth' and mental illness in the Australian asylum seeker and detention debates.

This article examines some of the key debates and interactions between the Australian government and medical profession in relation to the mental health consequences of the policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers. It explores how, in a series of episodes between 2001 and 2005, each side claimed to represent accurately the 'true' nature of the detention system through asserting superior 'objectivity' and commitment to 'scientific truth' in their representations of the mental health of asylum seekers. Placing these debates within the particular political objectives of the Liberal Party during John Howard's term as Prime Minister, the article explores how science and medical advocacy have been characterized and made to signify larger conflicts within the Australian political arena.

"In this miserable spot called quarantine": the healthy and unhealthy in nineteenth century Australian and Pacific quarantine stations.

By examining sources created by people who were detained or employed at the quarantine stations of Australia and the Western Pacific, this article illuminates aspects of the history of disease control that cannot be observed in other source material. Most research examining the history of maritime quarantine has tended to rely on the records of official and government agencies. As a result, discussion has largely been confined to government policy and larger issues of the political, economic, and social consequences of maritime disease control.

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

In many respects the Australian colonies were what one person called "the proud offspring of a grand old mother." Yet when it came to the prevention of imported infectious disease, Britain's Australian colonies were not a chip off the old block. British opposition to the lengthy and costly imposition of quarantine had intensified throughout the nineteenth century, eventuating in the abolition of human quarantine in 1896.

The first line of defence: British quarantine and the Port Sanitary Authorities in the nineteenth century.

This article examines the history of quarantine in Britain in the nineteenth century and the establishment of the Port Sanitary Authorities. Opposition to quarantine, which began at the beginning of the century, gained momentum over the following decades. In 1872, the Port Sanitary Authorities were introduced as an alternative system of port prophylaxis and as a means of rectifying some of the deficiencies quarantine presented in the prevention of imported infections.