Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01869:reg:4:p47
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01869
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 4 (pt 47/63)
Character Range: 474135–476981

on the Senate side, the contract to be completed in 24 weeks. Thus erected only a decade and a half after the opening of the provisional building, the wings provided an additional 48 offices, two attendants' boxes and two toilets. Although care was taken to ensure that the new wings employed the same architectural features as the rest of the building, they now completely enclosed the two remaining garden courtyards and erased the circular driveways on each side. But quite apart from these considerations, the additions created, possibly inadvertently, a significant precedent, in that for the first time they allowed some parliamentarians other than Ministers the luxury of having their own offices. This was far more the case on the Senate side where, with its fewer parliamentarians, the space problem had been less acute and where there were now some spare offices available for the use of private senators. Once established, the precedent stood as a model of the kind of accommodation that each private member and senator hoped would one day be provided for them by the further expansion of Parliament House.52 Aside from these major additions, a number of other changes were effected during the war and the immediately succeeding years.
  Thus, further office space was created in the early 1940s by using the verandahs fronting the garden courtyards, and the Cabinet Room was altered in 1944 possibly to accommodate an expanded Cabinet. In 1947, work was carried out under King's Hall and both Chambers to provide greater structural support, while steel trusses were put in place over King's Hall to give greater stability to the roof and ceiling than had been given by the oregon beams. The small post office was removed from King's Hall at this time, too.

  One noteworthy change of the war period that led to serious consequences for the building in the early post- war years was the decision, based either on a shortage of materials or on ill-considered cost-cutting grounds, to discontinue varnishing the building's external woodwork. Tests during the construction of the

    50      Hasluck, The Government and the People 1939–1941, p. 475.
    51      Memorandum, Serjeant-at-Arms to Clerk of the House of Representatives, 12 March 1940, House of Representatives [HReps] file 468/3.
    52      Extract from Minutes of the Thirty-Second Meeting of the National Capital Planning and Development Committee …' 5–6 November 1942; 'Extract from Minutes of Thirty-Third Meeting ...', 4-5 June 1943; 'Extract from Minutes of Thirty-Fourth Meeting
    …', 19–20 August 1943, all in CRS A3032/1, item PC46/1; contract documents on files CRS 295/1, items 927 and 934; Tanner and Associates, 'Provisional Parliament House Canberra: The Conservation Plan', p. 14-6; Emerton, 'The Case for a Permanent Building', p. 9.
  building and in