Fortress Parliament. We are no longer above it

The designer of Parliament House faced an almost impossible problem.

Aldo Giurgola knew that the designers of Canberra, Walter and Marion Griffin, had specified that what we now call Capital Hill was to be set aside for public or ceremonial activities, "or for housing archives and commemorating Australian achievements," rather than for the Parliament.

It was to look down on the Parliament, which would be below it, making the important symbolic point that the people are above it.

But in 1974 the Parliament voted to nab the site for itself, and set up a competition to decide who would design it.

Giurgola won by satisfying both the Parliament and the plan. The building would be at Capital Hill as was required, but it would be within it rather than on top of it, and grass would be laid over its surface so that people could walk on top of it and gaze down. They could picnic on it.

After completing the building in 1988, the Italian-American settled down in Canberra and saw out the rest of his days in the suburb of Kingston, just down the road from his proudest creation.

He died this May, aged 95. The people who ran the building didn't think to drop the flags to half mast.

He had been upset with them for some time. They'd put fences four-fifths of the way up the lawn so that, while people could still walk up from the bottom or take the lift to the top, they couldn't roam over the entire structure. They had built an ugly fortified fence at the back and stuffed workers into windowless offices in the basement.

Had he been asked about a 2.6-metre fence around the lawn, or a moat, as he would have to have been because of his "moral rights", he would have said it ripped out the building's heart.

The fence was whisked through the House of Representatives without the debate. It was rushed through the Senate in 30 minutes. Our elected representatives won. We are no longer above them.

In The Age and Sydney Morning Herald

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Political expenses. It's the white lie that's the worst one

Sunday Column

Of all the lies told in the parliamentary expenses scandal the most dangerous is the white one - the one designed to make it look as if it’s the rules themselves that are to blame, not the politicians who have abused them.

Foreign minister Julie Bishop tells it beautifully.

“I believe that there is a very grey area between what is official business and what is an event that could be characterised in another way,” she told the ABC’s AM program.

“When we are invited to events, most of the time it's in our capacity as a parliamentarian. If someone wanted to characterise it because I knew the people for example, well is that a social event?”

As unlikely as it seems, she was talking about a wedding.

The truth is that for back benchers the rules are unflinchingly clear.

Ordinary members of parliament can claim travel for only four purposes - meetings of their parliamentary party, “electorate business”, “parliamentary business” (such as representing the parliament or sitting on committees) and “official business” (defined as properly constituted meetings of government advisory bodies or functions representing a minister or presiding officer).

That’s it. Anything else - certainly a wedding, a ski trip or a trip interstate to take possession of a rental property, anything else is off limits. To suggest otherwise is to suggest the person making the claim can’t read.

And to suggest that things are alright because the finance department has paid the claim is absurd.

Coalition MP Don Randall did it while stonewalling over the $5259 he spent on the “electorate business” of a trip to Cairns with his a family member. Cairns is 3446 kilometres from his electorate.

He said the claim was "appropriately acquitted with the Department of Finance".

Anyone familiar with self-assessment will know that paying a claim isn’t the same as approving it, or even examining it...

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The Tax Office pays almost everything we claim automatically. It simply checks that the numbers add up. Years later it might come after us in an audit, but until then it treats as as adults who can wear the consequences of our actions.

Randall later conceded that he was wrong - payment doesn’t mean approval. He said he would refund the payment “to ensure the right thing is done by the taxpayer and to alleviate any ambiguity”.

Ambiguity? Randall sits on the committee that oversees MP’s behaviour. Like George Brandis, the attorney general, his claims have been referred to the police. They are not alone in seeing ambiguity where others see clear rules. Few in politics, and few near the very top of politics, seem able to grasp the obvious truth - that for the most part there’s a clear boundary between what is right and wrong. There isn’t a “very grey zone”.

That those at the top can’t grasp that truth says something about them and also something about the blindness that sets in when people ascend to positions of power.

It isn’t just me saying that. The moral blindness that accompanies power has been well documented.

Dutch psychologists Joris Lammers and Adam Galinsky are leading the way. A few years back they divided sixty students into two groups. One they “primed” to feel powerful by asking them to remember occasions when they had power. The other, they primed to feel powerless.

Each was asked to take part in an experiment in which they could cheat. The group that felt powerful cheated more.

Then they asked each group what they thought of people who cheated on travel expenses. Bizarrely the powerful group not only cheated more but came down harder on cheaters. Lammers and Galinsky entitled their study Power Increases Hypocrisy.

In order to be sure, they carried out the experiment again and again in different contexts. In one they asked whether it was okay to break the speed limit to get to an appointment on time. The powerful group was more likely to say no, but also more likely to say it would speed. In another they asked whether it was okay to omit from a tax return income earned from a second job. The powerful group said it was not, but was also more likely to say it would do it.

They were sexual hyprocates as well. Lammers and Galinsky emailed magazine readers anonymous questionnaires. The higher they were in their organisation's hierarchy, the more likely they were to confess that they had been unfaithful.

Power corrupts, and it appears to do it through a kind of blindness that allows powerful people to think the rules apply to other people, not them. It’s our leaders who are at fault in the politicians expenses scandal, not the rules they are breaking.

In The Canberra Times and The Sun Herald


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"The young men in Kevin Rudd's office could get old and not even notice"

How it used to be, from Katherine Murphy, a year ago

"The young men in Kevin Rudd's press office could get old and not even notice. The nerve centre of the 24/7 enterprise hums in a Neverland-like present. This illusion is reinforced by clocks along the wall. There are four, but three have stopped working.

It's 6am. Spring fog hangs heavy outside and the hair of Sean Kelly, a prime ministerial press secretary, is still wet. Suite MG65 smells stale on first contact, like discarded running socks or the signature left by the alpha males who have inhabited the PM's press office for the past 20 years.

A forlorn pot plant on the window ledge swoons; another leans into the frame, its will to stand upright lost.

The press office has an almost ostentatious lack of adornment, like a bunch of Swedish modernist freaks have moved in and swept the joint clean. This is not the environment of a particular aesthetic but the reflection of its inhabitants who live almost entirely at the whim of the man running the country, who have little more certainty than the next bullet point on the Prime Minister's ''tick tock''. Dried rations are stashed under the desk. There are no family photographs because there are no families... dogs, lawns or detritus of any kind, apart from some long-suffering girlfriends. A half-eaten punnet of cherry tomatoes sits on a desk.

Looking down benevolently from a framed black and white photograph on the wall is Bob Hawke in budgie smugglers clutching a beer. On the pin board is the word ''perspective'' accompanied by its various definitions.

Lachlan Harris strides into the office at 6.02am and plops down at a round table strewn with newspapers and press clippings. ''Perspective'' is framed neatly behind his head as he shuffles papers and speaks to Kelly in a low voice. Serious calls are taken outside, out of the earshot of snoopy.

Harris, at 30, is chief warden on the prime ministerial prison block, except his weapon is a BlackBerry, not a baton. If Harris calls you, it's serious. If you call Harris, then that's usually serious as well. The media office is only 10 per cent of Kevin Rudd's operation, but its tentacles stretch across the Government imposing an unprecedented level of discipline on a tame-cat caucus and on cabinet ministers, who rarely strain in the yoke.

In the office next door sits another relentlessly youthful aide who has clocked on at 4am to collate every major story running on television and radio. Four LCD television screens are on his wall - an innovation of the Rudd Administration. John Howard vetoed such new fangled machinery. All the televisions work, all at low volume, creating a wall of white noise, and a vague sensation you could be at Cape Canaveral. It's a miracle nobody's head explodes. By 11 o'clock, the young man tips his hat to humanity and springs a nosebleed. He needs to fetch his own paper towel. I suggest he tip his head back, which seems to do the trick.

Things are calmer in the PM's office now than they were in the heady days of setting up government after 11 soul-sapping years in Opposition. People are more relaxed, hence my presence with notebook and pen on the couch at the fag end of the sitting week.

The Herald was given unprecedented access to the Prime Minister's office to record a day in the life of the people running the country. Senior staff in the office spoke about their roles and their experiences, some for the record, others on background.

When the invaders of November 2007 first took possession, no one dared speak lest it denote hubris or lead down the slippery slope of ill-discipline. Many fretted about the adrenaline-charged punks running the PMO, and wondered whether the Prime Minister should go crazy and hire the odd grown-up.

The office has seen substantial turnover. Some were eased out. Others couldn't hack the madness, or the Swedish minimalism, or the cliques that spring up in political offices, the unreconstructed fiefdoms fuelled by cult of personality. ''Kevin is not an HR manager,'' says one senior figure. ''He is hands on and unpredictable with working hours. He can rest but they can't. Coming out of opposition, some people didn't make the grade. If people aren't up to it, then you can have some abrupt departures.'' Women also struggle to make the cut at senior levels in this office. They want inconvenient things, like infants and lives. And the blokes absolutely run this show. They like football, and novellas, and blogs, and popular culture in boxed sets of DVDs they can devour down the back of the Prime Minister's plane. One suspects baby is very much in the corner in this atmosphere.

Some within and outside Government still don't like the operation, but they worry less. Now government staff can occasionally be sighted in Canberra restaurants with a beer in hand, apparently in high spirits. Sometimes Rudd's Lost Boys even laugh. Out loud. With people watching.

The office has survived two critical stress tests: the global financial crisis and the political crisis created by Utegate and the rogue public servant Godwin Grech. Some close observers believe the Grech episode was critical in defining the new ''settled'' psychology of Rudd HQ.

For an agonising 24 hours, the Prime Minister's career hung on the word and the bureaucratic tidiness of one of his young advisers, Andrew Charlton. One person puts the analysis this way: ''The question was could they trust Charlton - an inexperienced 27-year-old only several months in the job - when he said he didn't send the email. Was the Prime Minister right to put his trust in these people - the micro-managing, inexperienced, immature office. History shows Rudd was right. If that episode had turned out differently it would have legitimised the criticism.''

Charlton, a pale, conventionally handsome economist, drifts in and out of my sightline during the day. He is often pegged as Kevin Rudd's economics adviser, but his real job is part sherpa, part emissary, part son surrogate, and his function is executive.

He runs an operation some heretical Government types dub the ''Hollowmen Unit'' - responsible for co-ordinating question time and the lines crafted to pitch the Government's message into the news cycle.

Harris and his operation is complementary to this process, although gossip around the Government suggests occasional tension between the two. Government press secretaries co-ordinate their activity according to a strict routine. The first phone hook-up is 6.15am, when major news stories are briefed. Advisers craft the message of the day and decide who will deliver it. Issues are ''incoming'' or ''outgoing'' - potential problems coming in, and the messages going out.

''Incoming'' this morning is the continuing controversy over the Government's stimulus-related spending on schools and border protection. Outgoing material is good news from an OECD report overnight, and the continuing splits within the Coalition.

Backbenchers hand-picked from the class of 2007 are nominated to field questions from journalists camped outside the doors of Parliament House. Further discussion follows at 8am, then the office rolls forward into the tactics meetings that determine the Government's question time strategy. By 6.30pm, the press secretaries hold their final hook-up of the day, where they report back on the news cycle, courtesy of whatever intelligence they can gather via a trawl through the press gallery upstairs; and they resolve on the message to push for the next day.

This degree of orchestration is unprecedented in Canberra, and the disciplined routine is replicated across the other 80 per cent of the Rudd operation, which funnels policy material into the now very powerful subcommittees of cabinet where actual decisions are made. Cabinet itself is little more than a rubber stamp and a political debating forum.

John Howard's team ran a tight ship but Liberals would not cop this strait-jacket. Running on a rat wheel, day in, day out, rain, hail or shine. ''Is there an upside to this madness?'' I ask one sensible government staffer. ''It works,'' he replies.

By 11am, we are outside Kevin Rudd's private office. Sean Kelly, his trademark Wolfmother hairdo now dry, is beside me. Inside is Kim Beazley, who in about five minutes will be Australia's new ambassador to Washington. Brendan Nelson suddenly materialises, smiling. He notes me and tries not to look startled. Nelson is ushered inside. Kevin Rudd grins like the Cheshire cat through the open door, which quickly shuts again, muffling Beazley's booming laugh.

After a short time, the door opens again and we are ushered in. Harris tells me out of the side of his mouth the conversation is off the record. Rudd, Beazley, Nelson and the Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, sit in a circle of squat orange chairs, making polite small talk. Over near Rudd's desk is Alister Jordan, the PM's chief of staff. His demeanour is priest-like. He cups his chin in one hand, the gesture of a man much older than his 30 years.

Rudd's office is warm and intimate, littered with the human touch: of books and photographs, and illuminated with ambient light. The space seems to swallow sound, protecting the intimacy of its conversations. It is hard to imagine Beazley and Nelson looking any more pleased. The group whisks out the door to face the waiting media, transformed from my altered vantage point into a hunting pack.

By noon, I'm in the office's geographical heart, surrounded by young women, the administrative assistants. The plants are healthier, the folders are imposing and colour-coded. Surrounded by sirens after a morning of testosterone. The office layout is ridiculous. It feels like a labyrinth. The uninitiated might get motion sickness, such is the pace at which these people move and take corners on two wheels.

A reception area divides the apparatchiks from the departmental liaison officers, who scurry about pre-question time, and the speech writers, Tim Dixon and former journalist Maria Hawthorne. The speech writing pod has a think-tank vibe with books and a designer chair. Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama look down from walls littered with books. Across from them is a private dining hall, a 1980s monstrosity complete with mirrored panelling. Back a bit is the sitting room, where A Current Affair crew is camped out waiting for three minutes with Rudd.

Harris pilots me across the hallway into the cabinet suite with its little rabbit warren of offices. We enter a nook that contains another small clutch of advisers, and an apparent computer graveyard. This space once housed John Howard's cabinet implementation unit. The space also contains an enormous safe, large enough to hold all cabinet documents in pre-electronic days. People are coy about what it might hold now. An adviser tells me a bureaucrat still carries in a briefcase the codes to all safes. ''Like the nuclear codes?'' I ask. ''I don't think the briefcase is actually handcuffed to the official,'' the adviser replies.

By 2pm, question time beckons. It's Thursday and most of the parliamentarians just want to get the hell out.

Jordan and Charlton sit at the front of the advisers' box, looking learned and strangely unflappable. The messages of the morning are amplified here.

Back in the office, I speak with Harris about him, and his colleagues, about growing older in increments in Neverland. It's uncomfortable, not excruciating, for Harris to try to analyse the operation. Does he think that surviving the Grech episode is a turning point of sorts for the office?

''No single event is an end point,'' he says. ''Every day - we have to deliver every day. Politics is not a great industry to look for milestones.'' Does the office feel vindicated by the wash-up then? ''That may be a perception - I don't know.'' Does he accept any of the internal critique that his part of the operation is too controlling or too relentless? ''I don't think what we do is any different to the level of co-ordination that existed under the Howard government. This is a phenomenon of modern politics. The days of ministers refusing to answer questions beyond their portfolios are now behind us. The fact that people are hearing one view and not contradictory views makes it easier to understand our message; and it's the policy, it's the substance that matters.''

By 5pm, I float through the office to speak to Jordan, and to the deputy chief of staff, David Fredericks. Their offices face each other across the corridor. Neither will speak on the record. The boss is the focus, not the staff - but we chat about running an office and clarify respective roles and responsibilities. Jordan's mannerisms are a faint echo of Rudd's. There is a deliberation in the movement which reflects his even temperament, and his well-honed strategy of conserving energy for the things that actually matter.

Describe Jordan in a sentence, I ask one of his colleagues. ''King of the world,'' came the reply. Jordan has a closeness with Rudd that makes him singularly powerful. It is the gift of his long and patient apprenticeship with a very exacting taskmaster. The older Fredericks sits on top of the policy unit, managing 10 staff, but his political judgment is sought, too.

Tim Costello, brother of Peter, popped in to see Rudd this week. The two talked history. A few weeks earlier, Costello tagged along to Harris's 30th birthday celebration at a Narrabundah restaurant. ''I was really impressed with the camaraderie and the humour and, dare I say, the fun, of the evening,'' says Costello.

''There was a genuine sense that these people like being together. The Godwin Grech episode bonded them. They stood up in the fiery furnace and the belly of the beast.''

At day's end, I ask Harris if he's dreaming of life outside. ''I love politics,'' he says. ''I'm not just interested in the Labor Party; I'm interested in politics.

''The Obama victory for me was like a footy final. I love this job. I love the competition. I love the debate. Keep it coming.''

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Canberra is not the problem

Paul Keating says "Canberra was in essence a great mistake".

Malcom Fraser says the new Parliament House should not have been built.

They are both wrong.

Canberra is a nice city, yes. With lovely people and a beautiful environment. But it is not un-Australian.

If anything it is the most Australian of Australia's cities, inland, small, friendly; with big backyards.

Jack Waterford cogently argues that it is not Canberra that is out of touch with the rest of Australia, but Parliament House that is out of touch with Canberra.

I've extracted highlights below the fold.


"My guess is that opposition to shifting the Australian capital to Sydney or Melbourne would be even more fierce today than it was 110 years ago; this time, however, probably joined by the citizens of NSW and Victoria as well as all the other states.

Each of these cities is a beautiful thing, Sydney more organic, for what that is worth, than Melbourne but neither is so well planned or designed that it could easily cope with the transport and other problems of plonking a parliament in a prominent place, let alone the infrastructure, buildings and insignia of a national capital...

When Keating was prime minister he would muse aloud, sometimes, about having the executive government thrown out of Parliament House. It would, he thought, be good for Parliament, as a legislature, and for improving the quality of administrative government.

I think he was right on that. One does not hear him on the subject now but it would be even better if the press gallery was thrown out of Parliament at the same time. Not prevented from reporting Parliament and the politics in and around the building, but forced to headquarter itself elsewhere, in the process being forced to inhale some of the air of Canberra as opposed to the air-conditioning of its mini-city.

Relocating ministers to offices in their departments could serve as a partial antidote to their increasing tendency to see comparatively little of their departmental advisers but to live cheek by jowl with political advisers. Minders themselves spend more time liaising with minders in other political offices than in dealing with departments.

Building, for our Prime Minister, a proper lodge with adequate living quarters and public spaces for entertaining and conducting cabinet, etc, and a reasonable "west wing"-style prime ministerial office, would give the position the dignity it holds in our constitutional system (whether in its present monarchical or later republican form).

Just as importantly, we might get a better parliamentary service from a building no longer so dominated by the "need" to give so much accommodation to ministers or for prime ministers and other ministers to colonise parliamentary spaces for their press conferences and functions, and by the way that ministers feel able to alter parliamentary timetables and routines simply for their personal convenience.

This is not to say that governments would not have the numbers in the Parliament, or be in a position to arrange matters according to the incumbents' view of the world. But a controlled distance between executive and Parliament might increase mutual respect, and, possibly, help restore a few balances.

A part of Keating's lament is that while one is slaving away at Parliament House, a run down to Manuka for some Chinese food does not always seem attractive. No doubt it is different these days in Double Bay, where he presides over coffee and croissants most mornings.

But his comment conceals a truth which reflects on journalists and minders as much as on politicians. Parliament House is a city in itself, down to its own cafes. A good many people who work there leave it only to fall into bed. Or, leaving late, only to go to bars patronised by journalists, minders and politicians, before falling into someone else's bed. The politicians who fly in and out according to the sitting schedule experience very little of Canberra. Those parts of Canberra, chiefly Manuka and Kingston, which were created for this sort of bizarre lifestyle, bear very little relationship to the way most Canberrans live, or the way most Australians live. It may suit politicians to pretend that they hate Canberra and can never wait to leave it, and that leaving Canberra is re-entering the real world.

The unreal world, however, is not "Canberra", but the life of the suitcase, the non-stop meetings, pretending one is living in a university college or boarding school, and the Holy Grail and other such hangouts. Young (mostly) unmarried journalists like to affect the same sort of ennui, anomie and world-weariness, and tend to blame Canberra rather than themselves. Merchant bankers and young lawyers, I am told, have many of the same problems in Sydney, if at about thrice the expense."


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Kevin Rudd's setting up a situation room?

Tony Wright, the Goanna, has the story.

Read more >>

"The young men in Kevin Rudd's office could get old and not even notice"

From this weekend's Age and Sydney Morning Herald:

Katharine Murphy was given rare access to the real power station of government in Australia - the Prime Minister's office.

The young men in Kevin Rudd's press office could get old and not even notice. The nerve centre of the 24/7 enterprise hums in a Neverland-like present. This illusion is reinforced by clocks along the wall. There are four, but three have stopped working.

It's 6am. Spring fog hangs heavy outside and the hair of Sean Kelly, a prime ministerial press secretary, is still wet. Suite MG65 smells stale on first contact, like discarded running socks or the signature left by the alpha males who have inhabited the PM's press office for the past 20 years.

A forlorn pot plant on the window ledge swoons; another leans into the frame, its will to stand upright lost.

The press office has an almost ostentatious lack of adornment, like a bunch of Swedish modernist freaks have moved in and swept the joint clean. This is not the environment of a particular aesthetic but the reflection of its inhabitants who live almost entirely at the whim of the man running the country, who have little more certainty than the next bullet point on the Prime Minister's ''tick tock''. Dried rations are stashed under the desk. There are no family photographs because there are no families, dogs, lawns or detritus of any kind, apart from some long-suffering girlfriends. A half-eaten punnet of cherry tomatoes sits on a desk...

Continued here.

Read more >>

Question Time is starting now!

Annabel Crabb is tweeting live.

As she says:

"Start your engines! And then, very sadly, just turn em over for a bit. House hearing condolence motions."

A mixed feed of tweets here: #QT

Meanwhile:

"The Coalition Senate Party Room today unanimously agreed to oppose both the motions of Senator Chris Evans and Senator Steven Fielding for further references to the Senate Privileges Committee in relation to the inquiry of the Economics Legislation Committee into the OzCar legislation, Opposition Senate Leader Nick Minchin said."

Oh my.

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Everyone wants to be part of saying sorry

As I cycled up to Parliament House at 8.00am the roads were like car parks. People were walking up to Parliament House and the screens erected nearby with incredible goodwill.

The air is crisp, and so was the gray hair on the heads of the aboriginal people approaching the Parliament as if this is their day.

One hour before the building is due to open there is a queue. I took this photo on my mobile phone.

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Our Parliament, made right.

My Great Grandfather was at the opening of the first Parliament House in Canberra in 1927 - he was what we would now call a Coalition MP.

My Grandma was at the opening ceremony.

To my deep regret I missed out on the opening of the new and permanent Parliament House in 1988.

But I was in its Members Hall today, when things were put right.

Ngambri elder Matilda House Williams welcomed the House to her country.

"A Welcome to Country acknowledges our people and pays respect to our ancestors spirits who've created the lands," she said.

"In doing this the Prime Minister shows that we call proper respect, to us, to his fellow parliamentarians and to all Australians.''

"For thousands of years our people have observed this protocol, it is a good and honest and a decent and human act to reach out and make sure everyone has a place and is welcome."

The Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in reply: "It has taken 41 parliaments to get here - we can be a bit slow sometimes - but we got here."

"I don't think the openings of our parliaments will ever be the same again - and that is good."

The Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson said, to Matilda House Williams, on behalf of Indigenous Australians:

"You made involuntary sacrifices. They were different, but they were no less important than the pioneering sacrifices of those who came to live here."

"I can assure you that whatever happens in future, so long as I have anything to do with it, Parliaments will be opened like this."

Read more >>

Tuesday and Wednesday: Two big days for Australia's Parliament

Here's how it will pan out. Much of it will be televised:

Following a Welcome to Country ceremony for members and senators in Members’ Hall at 9am, the Clerk of the House of Representatives, Ian Harris, and Clerk of the Senate, Harry Evans, will begin proceedings in their respective chambers at 10.30am by reading the proclamation from the Governor-General, Major General Michael Jeffery, calling Parliament together.

In the House, the Usher of the Black Rod will arrive from the Senate to invite the 150 House MPs to the Senate chamber to hear the Governor-General’s appointed deputy, the Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, Anthony Murray Gleeson, declare open the 42nd Parliament at 10:40am.

The MPs will return to the House at about 10:55am to be sworn in and then elect their new Speaker.

Once the new Speaker is elected, he or she is dragged “unwillingly” to the Speaker’s Chair (centuries ago Speakers in the United Kingdom risked being beheaded by the Monarchy), and then the Mace is placed on the Table to signify the House of Representatives is properly constituted...

The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, then informs the House that the new Speaker and the other MPs will be presented to the Governor-General at 2.30pm in the Members’ Hall.

Soon after the MPs return to the House at about 3pm, the Usher of the Black Rod will knock three times on the chamber door before announcing the members are required in the Senate to hear the Governor-General’s opening speech. This speech is a formal declaration of the causes for the calling together of the Parliament, which outlines the agenda of the 42nd Parliament.

His speech is followed by a 19-gun artillery salute fired from Federation Mall at about 3:50pm.

“Whereas many nations have endured bloody battles to secure their democracies, we are fortunate that the stable democracy we have enjoyed for more than a century was founded through peaceful negotiation and vote. The parliamentary procedures and traditions we inherited from Westminster in some way represent the bullet holes of our democracy,” Clerk of the House Ian Harris says.

The House resumes formal business at about 3.55pm, when the Prime Minister announces the Ministry and Whips, the Leader of the Opposition announces the Shadow Ministry and Whips, and the Leader of the Nationals announces Whips followed by the first reading of a formal bill.

On Wednesday morning (13 February), a motion will be moved in the new Parliament offering an apology to Australia’s Indigenous people, shortly after commencement at 9am. The new Parliament will sit for two weeks until Friday 22 February.

Read more >>

Parliament House is hotter this week

If you work at Parliament House, and you are preparing to go to work this morning – take note. It’ll be hotter than normal and you’ll need more comfortable clothes.

Until this week however hot it has been outside, and however much hot air has been created inside, the temperature within the massive 4,500-room complex has been maintained a comfortable 22 degrees.

To remove the heat the air-conditioning system sucks up an average of 100 kilolitres of water each day – around twice as much as did the Parliamentary fountains and water features until they were switched off, and about twice as much as do all the building’s toilets...

On really hot days, such as the scorcher earlier this month, the system soaks up almost 300 kilolitres.

A few weeks ago the head of the Department of Parliamentary Services Hilary Penfold wondered out loud how much water could be saved by simply turning down the airconditioning and allowing the building to get hottter.

She was surprised to discover that no-one knew. “The fact is that no-one has ever thought about it, going back 25 years or whenever when they first started designing these things, on-one bothered to think about the relationship between temperature and water use,” she said.

So for four days from today until Australia Day, Parliament House will part of an experiment. The target temperature will be set at 24 degrees, rather than 22. Each day Ms Penfold’s staff will calibrate the relationship between the temperature inside, the temperature outside and the amount of water needed to carry the heat away.

Asked why she had chosen 24 degrees as the target temperature for the experiment Ms Penfold replied: “Because it is two degrees above 22. We probably need two degrees to give us enough difference to be able to measure what we are doing.”

“We will be trying to develop in effect a spreadsheet that will track the relationship between the target temperature, the outside temperature and the water use, and establish what difference it makes to increase the temperature.”

If the trial demonstrates that a warmer Parliament House can save water, and if Ms Penfold doesn’t get too many complaints, she will consider recommending to the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate that the temperature be lifted throughout the month of February when both houses are back and the building houses 3,500 people.

In a circular to building occupants she has advised staff preparing to go to work today to take account of the trial in choosing their clothes. It would probably be safe to leave jumpers and coats at home.

Read more >>