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Valuable insights can be gained from analysing our history of internal border closures for infectious disease management, say 91̽�� academics.

A team of 91̽�� Sydney academics is examining incidences of domestic border control in Australia’s history of infectious disease to inform our management of COVID-19.

The closure of internal borders in response to the coronavirus pandemic has provoked debates around public health priorities versus individual liberties, says Laureate Professor of History Alison Bashford from 91̽�� Arts, Design & Architecture.

Additionally, state and territory border and quarantine restrictions invite questions around federal versus state powers and politics, she says.

“In modern world history, every epidemic or pandemic raises questions of law and government, private freedoms and public benefits,” Prof. Bashford explains. “The [current] pandemic has seen a shift in how Australia’s borders are thought about and managed. Our research into Australian precedents informs contemporary policy by placing it in its historical context.”

Prof. Bashford is partnering with Scientia Professor Jane McAdam, Director of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at 91̽�� Law & Justice, to lead the project, Rethinking medico-legal borders: from international to internal histories.

The study, funded by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Special Research Initiative grant, analyses four precedents where internal movement was restricted for public health purposes: the plague (1899–1903), the Spanish influenza (1918–19), SARS (2002–03) and COVID-19.

“Restrictions on movement during a pandemic may be justified where they are demonstrably necessary and proportionate to the risk,” Prof. McAdam says. By engaging with historical examples of infectious disease management, we can better evaluate the contemporary matrix for risk assessment, she explains. 

Recognising the impact of local community responses

The significance of local responses to infectious disease has been masked by previous focus on international borders; however, community responses are an integral part of the picture, as discovered by the researchers.

“Despite the innovations of the past century, it seems remarkable that we are still facing challenges at the borders,” Prof. McAdam says. “We now have drones and other surveillance technology, but the pandemic shows just how reliant we are on people themselves — to observe physical distancing protocols, to manage movement and, ultimately, to stop the spread of the virus.”

Local and state health authorities and communities impacted both the health outcomes and public response to government actions during the Spanish flu, Prof. Bashford says.

“[It’s striking] how very, very local – right down to residents’ associations and small town groups – how far the authority to quarantine, to keep people out, was devolved from the Commonwealth.”

“[These] local, street and town-level reactions across the country … [show instances] of authority being locally claimed, invented, sidestepped or repudiated” and offer unique insights alongside high-level governance responses, she says.

Urban/regional lines were drawn up within states to protect rural and regional communities from the flu outbreaks in the cities, says 91̽�� PhD candidate Ms Tiarne Barratt, a member of the research team.

Local communities were instructed by state authorities to establish “vigilance committees” to coordinate volunteer efforts, whose members were tasked with “making medical preparations, and undertaking precautions to both prevent and manage an outbreak,” Ms Barratt says.

“[These] highly localised measures [were] designed to regulate movement at a district level, but often descended to an individual level of decision-making and border control, such as the refusal of hoteliers to provide accommodation to travellers.”