FEDERAL QUARAFTTIKE. 
839 
One suggestion I would venture to make, arising out of the 
changed aspect of the colonies during the ten years which have elapsed 
since the Sydney conference formulated its demand for federal 
quarantine — that a third federal quarantine station has become a 
necessity somewhere in the neighbourhood of Port Darwin, which has 
become a sort of highway for our Chinese brethren to push their way 
into Australia. 
T would further express the opinion that whilst we have good 
reason to complain of our respective Governments being too dilatory 
in responding to the request of the Sydney conference of 1 884, it is 
certain, notwithstanding, that the principle underlying Dr. McKellar’s 
proposal for federal quarantine has already taken root, and is now 
being acted upon in, of course, an imperfect manner. Although no 
federal quarantine station exists either at Thursday Island or Port 
Albany, there is evidently a close watch kept at both places by the 
quarantine officers located there to prevent any contagious or infectious 
disease being permitted to pass without due notice being given to their 
respective Governments, and thereby to all Australia, enabling 
immediate defensive measures to be taken wherever they may be 
required. 
The somewhat imperfect pictures I have ventured to lay before 
you of federal quarantine, as proposed by the Sydney conference 
of 1884, has such obvious advantages over our present quarantine 
arrangements as to be self-evident. That it would result in a 
considerable saving of time, trouble, and expense to all the colonies 
no one can doubt, as well as that it would give much greater confidence 
and security against the admission of most of the dangerous, 
contagious, and infectious diseases always to be apprehended from 
the thickly-inhabited and insanitary countries to the north of us, with 
whom we are becoming day by day more intimately connected 
commercially. 
I do not consider, however, that I should be doing full justice to 
my subject were I to omit the warning that, however we may praise 
federal quarantine as a secure barrier against the admission of these 
formidable diseases, it is after all but a barrier which, in the ordinary 
course of events, is certain to fail once and again in preventing the 
enemy passing through and finding a resting-place in our midst. 
It therefore appears evident to me that any future proposal 
to adopt it in lieu of our present system should be accompanied 
with some such code, if not the identical one, of internal sanitary 
arrangement as has been adopted in Europe, throughout which 
continent it is now actively enforced, under the terms of the Dresden 
convention. 
Although I for one am in entire accord with the Central Board 
of Health of this colony in declining to advise our Government to join 
in carrying out the full terms of the Dresden convention in these 
colonies, simply because, owing to the scattered nature of our popula- 
tions and the insanitary condition of all but our capital cities, it would 
be impossible to do so,“l am nevertheless strongly of opinion that all 
the colonies included within the Australian continent, and Tasmania as 
well, could with great advantage copy our European brethren in devising 
a code of sanitary regulations applicable to the whole continent which 
