Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01868:reg:4:p61
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01868
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 4 (pt 61/63)
Character Range: 509156–511817

no election could take place in May for the vacancy that would by left by Gair's departure. To make sure that Gair did not resign before Bjelke- Petersen issued the writs, Senator Ron Maunsell treated him to prawns and beer in his room, M161. The ruse worked and the writs were issued before Gair submitted his resignation. Ultimately, the failure of the plot prompted Prime Minister Whitlam to call a double dissolution election at which, however, Labor was still unable to win a majority in the Senate.80

  By the mid-1970s, it was clear that the construction of a new, more spacious and permanent home for the Commonwealth Parliament could not be delayed much longer. In 1974, the long-debated question of a site for the building was finally settled in favour of Capital Hill, the one that Murdoch had recommended back in the early 1920s, and the following year the Labor government appointed a new Joint Standing Committee on the New and Permanent Parliament House. Revived as a more effective body by the Fraser government in 1976, the committee produced a series of reports in which it argued strongly for work to begin on the project. Somewhat reluctant at first, the government eventually bit the bullet on 21 November 1978, when Cabinet decided to proceed with the project. The new building was to be completed in 1988, the bicentennial year of European settlement. To choose a design for the building, a two-stage international design competition was inaugurated in April 1979 and the winning design – that submitted by the New York architectural firm of Mitchell, Giurgola and Thorp – was announced in June 1980. Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser turned the first sod for the new building on 18 September 1980 and his successor, Bob Hawke, laid the foundation stone on 4 October 1983.81

  With the prospect of moving to a new building now in sight, there was little to be done in the old building but make do with the existing conditions. The shortage of accommodation and resulting working conditions in the provisional building were by now almost unbearable. In July 1983, it was reported that some 3,000 people were now employed at Provisional Parliament House, but that fully 1,800 of these had to be accommodated in various former hostels and other 'inappropriate' buildings nearby. A few years later, the number of press representatives and their technical support staff approached a figure of 300, about 12 times the number it had been when the building opened in 1927. In 1984, in what looks like a last-ditch effort to squeeze some extra office space out of the building, the two verandahs at the front were closed in. At about this time, too,