Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01868:reg:4:p54
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01868
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 4 (pt 54/63)
Character Range: 491317–494185

Department, 25 February 1954; Menzies to Cameron, 10 March 1954; AS Brown, Secretary, PM's Department, to Menzies, 12 March 1954; AM McMullin, President of the Senate, to Cameron, 13 September 1954; all in CRS A462/16, item 6/41.
    63      Emerton, 'The Case for a Permanent Building', p. 9.
    64      Emerton, 'The Case for a Permanent Building', p. 15.
    65      Memorandum, J Meredith, Chief Engineer, to Secretary, Joint House Department, 12 March 1954; Speaker of the House of Representatives, 'Statement by Mr Speaker – 25th August, 1960'; memorandum, WI Emerton to Speaker of the House of Representatives, 22 August 1960, CRS A6728/13, item 156/1; Pearson and O'Keefe, 'Parliamentary Library Old Parliament House: Heritage Analysis', vol. 1.
  Senate side of the building in the late 1950s, but even so Tom Uren later recalled that conditions were so cramped in the building at this time that he, Frank Crean, Jim Cairns and Gordon Bryant were forced to share a single room. The critical shortage of space particularly affected working conditions for press representatives whose numbers had risen to around 75, roughly triple the original figure.66 For his part, Frank Green, who had recently retired after long service as the Clerk of the House, was in no doubt as to the cause of the problem and its solution. He considered that the provisional building was in every way suitable for Parliament and that, instead of the government embarking on a project to construct a new permanent Parliament House, 'Ministers be told to arrange for their offices and secretaries elsewhere, the National Library staff and books be removed, and newspaper proprietors find private offices for their representatives'. As Green observed sharply, 'No other country outside the Iron Curtain would tolerate such a situation in which ministers and their personal staffs occupied suites of offices in the Parliament building'.67

  In one respect, Green's complaints were addressed when the National Library Act of 1960 separated the National Library from the Parliamentary Library. While the National Library's collections were at that time scattered in temporary accommodation in Canberra and Queanbeyan, the separation of the two bodies indicated that it would not be long before all of the Library's materials and staff would depart the provisional building. But, otherwise, the executive in particular was too well entrenched in the building for there to be any chance of Green's drastic proposals becoming a reality. In fact, soon afterwards, the continuing pressure on accommodation and the lack of progress on any plans to erect a permanent Parliament House led to a major extension on the House of Representatives side of the provisional building. As there were approximately twice the number of members as there were senators, accommodation was in much shorter supply