Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01306:reg:67
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01306
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 67
Character Range: 115710–118079

67   Letter, Cumpston to W.M. Hughes, 29 October 1937, CRS A1928, item 695/24.

     2.10 Renewal and Decline

  With the retirement of MacKenzie, Cumpston moved quickly to try to re-define the Institute's role in the public health arena. Concerned that the Institute had been running down in parallel with the decline in MacKenzie's health, Cumpston wanted to 'restore it in a modified form'. Before taking any action, however, he sought the views of MacKay and Wood Jones. MacKay suggested that the Institute should focus on the health problems of a young country with a small population, and thus should deal more generally with the subject of health and disease in Australia. To this end, MacKay suggested that the Institute should become the Headquarters of the newly-formed National Health and Medical

  Research Council [NHMRC]. On the strength of this advice, Cumpston asked the NHMRC to inspect the building and its facilities with a view to the organisation's taking it over. After the inspection and due consideration of the matter, the NHMRC refused Cumpston's offer, stating that it 'cannot find any place for the Australian Institute of Anatomy in its projected research program at the present time.'68

  Unsuccessful in this approach, Cumpston then turned to the Advisory Council on Nutrition and in particular to its recommendation that a section should be formed within the Department of Health for the study of child growth, with special reference to children's diet. Cumpston envisaged that the Institute would become the national

  centre for this research and proposed that, to accommodate the research effort, a new wing be added to the back of the existing building. Cabinet agreed to the proposal in March 1938. When the government's plans for the Institute were announced in the press, however, it provoked a storm of protest in the Canberra community and in Parliament. Many saw the proposal both as a dismantling of the principles on which the Institute had been established and as a violation of Griffin's plan for the city. The government, meanwhile, sought legal opinion from the Solicitor-General as to the legality of its proposal to build the new wing. On receiving his advice that it contravened the Institute
  of Anatomy Act, the government promptly dropped the scheme.69

Figure 25: Proposed additions, 1938 (NFSA 2018)