Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01868:reg:4:p39
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01868
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 4 (pt 39/63)
Character Range: 452626–455510

laying 80 tons of gravel on the roof of the main building, but the difficulties with the roof never completely disappeared. As TR Casboulte, the Executive Architect at the time, indicated, the sheer expanse of flat roof – 4,580 square yards (3,830 square metres) in the case of the main building – more or less guaranteed that some leakage would occur in periods of rain following extended exposure to Canberra's hot, drying sun.37

  If the problems with the roof proved virtually insoluble, a burden of an entirely different but even more momentous character now emerged. The difficulty had its origins in government decisions about the relocation of Commonwealth public servants to Canberra and the provision of adequate departmental accommodation for them in the national capital.

  Originally, the government proposed that the greater part of each department would remain in Melbourne and that, in the interim, secretariats comprising a skeleton staff from each of the twelve ministries would be accommodated in purpose-built Secretariat buildings, to become known as East and West Blocks, in Canberra. In total, the secretariat staff was intended to number only about 200 officers. However, in 1925, the government abandoned the Secretariat scheme and replaced it with a plan to transfer a large proportion of the central staff of the departments to Canberra by June 1927. A major consequence of this decision was that the government now had to provide office accommodation in Canberra for approximately 1,000 public servants, with many more to follow in short order. As East and West Blocks were intended to accommodate some 440 officers between them when they were built, they were clearly insufficient to meet departmental requirements for office space.38

  The accommodation problem was compounded later in the 1920s by another change of government policy on Canberra. In October 1927, the government let a contract for the construction of the proposed Permanent Administrative Building in the Parliamentary Triangle. Though designed to house eight of the departments that were to be moved from Melbourne, this building was not expected to be completed until 1934. As it was, soon after the foundations for the building were laid in April 1928, the government decided for financial reasons to postpone construction. With the onset of the Great Depression in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of October 1929, any prospect of an early resumption of the project evaporated. Despite the fact that the government took steps to provide alternative office space in Canberra, the policy reversals on the Secretariat scheme and the Permanent Administrative Building resulted in a deficiency of office accommodation for the departmental or executive functions of government near Parliament House or in

    36      Memorandum, Butters to Minister for Home and Territories, 8