STRANDED NEW ZEALANDERS.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 130, 2 June 1919, Page 4

STRANDED NEW ZEALANDERS.

I At last some relief is to be given to' the unfortunate New Zealandere stranded in Sydney. The Minister for Public Health has given instructions that a i • I restricted passenger service may be resumed at once. Fifty passengers are to be taken per trip, a doctor must be carried, and each steamer must go to, Wellington. The selection of the fifty' ' may cause some heart-burnings. Mr Rus-1 sell talks about the responsibility of preventing the epidemic getting a hold again ill New Zealand, and while deeply sym-: ' pathieing with the etranded New Zealanders, says that what has been done was done for the good of the country, but the fact is that the limitation of passengers to fifty per ship is due to the lack of quarantine accommodation in New Zealand more than to actual fear of the epidemic. If the Government had I not been so clow in providing quarantine I accommodation, all the New Zcalanders might be back by now. As it is, they i will have to come in batches, and to Wellington apparently, because Welling-1 ton has the beet quarantine accommo- < dation. What that best is may be i judged by recent criticisms and admis-: sions. "It must be freely admitted," says the district health office, "that the I quarantine buildings on Somes Island ' are, on account of their age, in a most unsatisfactory condition. Generally speaking, they arc past repair, a I j great deal of the timber of which they' \ are built being borer-infested and de- , cayed." Are we to understand that such : : accommodation as there is at Auckland is worse than this? It is not creditable I to the Health Department that six' months after the epidemic quarantine : arrangements should be in such a state. What we 'I have happened if during those six : iths half-a-dozen transport* carrying influenza in a bad form, or, smallpox, had reached New Zealand?