EXPLANATORY STATEMENT
STATUTORY RULES 1988 No. 328
Issued by Authority of the Minister for Community Services and Health
Quarantine Act 1908
Quarantine (General) Regulations (Amendment)
Subsection 87(1) of the Quarantine Act 1908 (the Act) provides that the Governor-General may make regulations, not inconsistent with the Act, prescribing all matters which by the Act are required or permitted to be prescribed or which are necessary to convenient to be prescribed for carrying out or giving effect to the Act.
Subsection 35(1A) of the Act provides that a quarantine officer (human quarantine) may, by order in writing, order into quarantine any person, being a person who is or has been on board an oversea vessel or overseas installation, who fails to satisfy the quarantine officer (human quarantine) that he has, within the prescribed period, been successfully vaccinated or innoculated against any prescribed disease.
Deficiencies have recently become apparent in the Quarantine (General) Regulations (the Regulations) in relation to persons who may have been exposed to infection from yellow fever. The
main purpose of the proposed Regulations is to overcome these deficiencies by prescribing yellow fever for purposes of subsection 35(1A) of the Act and to prescribe for purposes of that subsection a period beginning 10 years before a person arrives in Australia and ending 10 days before that person arrives in Australia.
The effect of the proposed amendment will be that a person who arrives in Australia without being vaccinated against yellow fever within the prescribed period may be ordered into quarantine. The period of quarantine is 6 days beginning from when, in the opinion of a quarantine officer, the person was last exposed to infection from yellow fever. During that period of quarantine, the person may either be detained or released under quarantine surveillance. While under quarantine surveillance a person is usually required to report daily to a doctor to determine if any disease symptoms have developed.
The proposed Regulations also remove all references to smallpox from the Regulations as small-pox has now been eradicated. In addition a number of minor amendments are made, including amendments to regulations 20, 21, 22 and 31 and the repeal of Forms F, G and L of Schedule 1 consequential upon the amendment
of the Act in 1984 to require health reports to be in a form approved by the Director of Human Quarantine rather than, as previously, to be in a form prescribed by the regulations.
The Regulations came into operation on the date of their notification in the Gazette.