Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01869:reg:4:p59
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01869
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 4 (pt 59/63)
Character Range: 504657–507466

temporary Prime Minister's suite and Cabinet Room, this series of rooms was refurbished, mainly as ministerial suites for Senators D McClelland (M152), JL Cavanagh (M153) and KS Wriedt (M154). Most of the other rooms on the main floor level were used as offices for senators, as were the offices in the front half of the lower floor. The rooms in the back half of this floor level were occupied by Joint House Department staff, with the Secretary of this department housed in the office in the extreme southwest corner. The upper floor was reserved for Hansard staff, transcribers working in booths specially built for their use.78

  For people working in the new wing, there was one great drawback. Circulation of air in the narrow corridors and small offices was severely limited, while entry of fresh air from the outside was virtually non-existent.
  This created an excessively stale and stifling atmosphere in the wing, especially when the heat of the summer sun beat on the exterior walls. Matters were not helped by the numbers of parliamentarians and staff who smoked inside the building in those days. From quite soon after the wing was built, there were frequent complaints from the its occupants about the stifling and uncomfortable working conditions, and requests to do something about it. Cut off from the fresh air outside, some occupants took comfort in being able to look out on the garden in the internal courtyard. Desperate for some fresh air, another resident of the wing, Senator Rosemary Crowley, worried away with a key at a small crack in the frame of her window in Room M167 to expand the gap and let some cool air in from outside.79

  Another aspect of the wing that mirrored the situation in the building as a whole was the intimacy of working conditions of parliamentarians, executive and parliamentary staff, and journalists. The poky rooms and narrow corridors did not lend themselves to privacy or to the concealment of major political developments, such as intrigues and conspiracies against party leaders. Because of the closeness of the conditions under which people had to work, it was easy to detect a rising tension in the atmosphere that betokened that something big was afoot. This is a feature that is reputedly lacking in the new Parliament House. Thus,

    76      Dick, Fifty Eventful Years, p. 43.
    77      Minute, National Capital Development Commission, 'Parliament House: Temporary Accommodation Handover', 5 December 1972, Senate file 25/1/3, OPH; newspaper cutting, 'Sizing up the Prime Minister', 1972, House of Representatives file 72/318, OPH. See also 'Parliament House, Canberra, Telephone Directory', August 1974.
    78      Minute, A Ferrari, Director of Works, to Secretary and Manager, NCDC, 'Parliament House extensions – Refurbishing of