Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01868:reg:4:p31
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01868
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 4 (pt 31/63)
Character Range: 432299–435083

parliamentary departments: the Joint House Department which was established in 1922, the Parliamentary Reporting Service which recorded proceedings and produced Hansard, and the Parliamentary Library. A complicating factor with the space needed for the Library was that it also included the nascent National Library, with all the growth in book holdings and demand for future space that implied. In his plans for the building, Murdoch allowed for some expansion of the Library's holdings, but he indicated that this allowance was conditional on separate premises being provided for the National Library at an early date.26

  Other space was required in the building for a variety of other occupants and services such as press representatives, dining and recreation facilities, engineering services and a small post office which was to be established at the rear of King's Hall. The press representatives were to be housed in two groups of six offices located in the gallery above the main floor. At the rear of the main block and connected to it by four covered walkways was to stand a two-storey dining–recreation block (the south wing), complete with kitchen on the lower floor, and dining rooms, a billiards room, lounge and Members' Bar on the main level. The bar was to prove of little solace for parliamentarians for the first year in which Provisional Parliament House was opened as prohibition was then in force in the Capital Territory. The engineering services for the building were to include a pneumatic tube system to connect Parliament House with the Government Printing Office and Canberra's general post office. The use of such a system may again have been influenced by Pearce's views. He had seen a pneumatic tube system in operation in the Capitol in Washington and was full of praise for it, the system delivering books and documents to members from the Congressional Library with great efficiency in a matter of a few minutes. For convenience, this Library was also placed midway between the two houses in the Capitol, a position that was seemingly mirrored on a smaller scale in Murdoch's provisional house. As a whole, the building was to contain the two legislative Chambers and 182 other rooms. Of these, 63 rooms were offices designed to accommodate approximately 108 parliamentarians and parliamentary staff.27

  A notable peculiarity of Murdoch's plan was that he made no provision for offices for private members and senators; they were expected to make use of their party rooms to attend to their correspondence and any other business they needed to transact outside the Chambers. Pearce was critical of this arrangement and compared it unfavourably with the situation he had seen at first hand in Washington, where senators and all members of Congress