Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01868:reg:4:p23
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01868
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 4 (pt 23/63)
Character Range: 411740–414647

would certainly be very substantial.11

  By way of an alternative, the government had already referred to the committee for its consideration a proposal to erect a 'Convention Hall' that could be expanded into a temporary parliament house. On examining the idea, however, the committee came to the conclusion that, for Commonwealth Parliament to function at all in Canberra, it would require from the outset a full complement of staff and facilities, such as Hansard reporting staff, a reference library and so on. As the Convention Hall idea could not fulfil these requirements, the committee soon rejected the proposal. In its place, the committee put forward its own recommendation for the erection of a 'provisional' parliament house. Although the distinction between a temporary and a provisional structure looked like a piece of semantic hair-splitting, the committee clearly understood what it meant by the difference. To the committee members, the temporary parliament house that was intended to grow from the original Convention Hall would have been a structure of 'an eminently temporary character', built of fibro cement, iron or weatherboard and with a lifespan of 10 to 20 years. By contrast, the committee members envisaged their Provisional Parliament House as a solidly built structure of brick and concrete that would be aesthetically pleasing, would provide a full range of parliamentary facilities from the start and would serve as the nation's legislature for around half a century. The projected difference in cost between building each structure was not significant, but the longer lifespan of the provisional house gave far better value for money.12

  As to the authorship of the idea, the suggestion has been made that John Smith Murdoch, who was soon to design Provisional Parliament House, may have influenced the committee in this direction from his position as Chief Architect in the Department of Works and Railways.13 The suggestion assumes that the committee members were amenable to his influence, but in fact this does not seem likely. Murdoch was not a member of the committee and therefore could have only exercised any influence from a distance.

  In any case, the committee's Chairman, John Sulman, exhibited no inclination to accept Murdoch's ideas. Despite his professional regard for Murdoch, Sulman disagreed with him on most of the fundamental issues and, under Sulman's leadership, the committee completely rejected Murdoch's views in relation to sites for the provisional and permanent parliament houses. It is also significant that Murdoch's superior, Colonel Percy Owen, the department's Director-General of Works, had consistently maintained from 1904 through to his appointment to the Sulman committee in 1921 that the government should not build any sort of temporary structure, but should start with the nucleus of a permanent structure and gradually add