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Parliament House, Canberra, ACT


Old and new Parliament House as seen from Lake Burley Griffin


View from the roof

In 1901, when the six British colonies in Australia federated to form the Commonwealth of Australia, Melbourne and Sydney were the two largest cities in the country, but the long history of rivalry between them meant that neither could become the national capital.
In 1909, after much argument, the Parliament decided that the new capital would be in the southern part of New South Wales, on the site which is now Canberra. The Commonwealth acquired control over the land in 1911, but World War I intervened, and nothing was done for some years to build the city. Federal Parliament did not leave Melbourne until 1927.

Old Parliament House

After World War I the Federal Capital Advisory Committee was established to prepare Canberra to be the seat of government, including the construction of a Parliament House. The committee decided that it would be best to erect a "provisional" building, to serve for a predicted 50 years until a new, "permanent" House could be built. In the event, Old Parliament House was Parliament's home for 61 years.
However, successive governments blanched at the likely cost of building a new, much bigger Parliament House. There was also a prolonged battle over where to put a new House: either on the same site as the old one, which was where the original designer of Canberra, Walter Burley Griffin, had intended it to be, behind it on Capital Hill, or by the lake shore.

New Parliament House

In 1978 the Fraser government decided to proceed with a new building on Capital Hill, and the Parliament House Construction Authority was created. A two-stage competition was announced, for which the Authority consulted the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and, together with the National Capital Development Commission, made available to competitors a brief and competition documents. The competition drew 329 entries from 28 countries. Five were invited to advance to the second stage to present more detailed plans and building models.
The competition winner was the US-based Italian architect (and now Australian citizen) Romaldo Giurgola, with a design which involved burying most of the building under Capital Hill, and capping the edifice with an enormous spire topped by a large Australian flag. The facades, however, deliberately echoed the designs of the Old Parliament House, so that there is a family resemblance despite the massive difference in scale.
Construction began in 1981, and the House was intended to be ready by Australia Day, 26th January 1988, the 200th anniversary of European settlement in Australia. It was expected to cost A$220 million. Neither the deadline nor the budget were met. The building was finally opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 9th May 1988, the anniversary of the opening of both the first Federal Parliament in Melbourne on 9th May 1901 by the Duke of Cornwall and York (later King George V), and of the Provisional Parliament House in Canberra on 9th May 1927 by the Duke of York (later King George VI). From above, the design of the site is in the shape of two boomerangs enclosed within a circle. Much of the building is buried beneath Capital Hill, but the meeting chambers and accommodation for parliamentarians are free-standing within the boomerang-shaped arms.
The site, 640 metres in diameter, spans 32 hectares, of which the structure occupies an area 300 metres long and 300 metres wide. There are 25,000 granite slabs on the curved walls which, placed end to end, would stretch 46 kilometres. The building required 300,000 cubic metres of concrete, enough to build 25 Sydney Opera Houses and has a design life of at least 200 years. The building has 4,700 rooms and has 2,416 clocks that are used for voting. On a non-sitting day there could be 2,000 to 3,000 people working there. Parliament House attracts approximately 1,000,000 visitors a year.
The flag flown from the 81 metre flagpole is 12.8m by 6.4m, about the size of half a tennis court. The flagpole weighs 220 tonnes and is made of polished stainless steel from Newcastle, New South Wales. It is one of the largest stainless steel structures in the world. It was designed to be the pinnacle of Parliament House and is an easily recognizable symbol of national government. It is visible by day from outside and inside Parliament House and floodlit at night. The flag itself weighs approximately 15 kg.
Although security has been greatly tightened in recent years, much of the building is open to the public. The building was designed to "sit above" Old Parliament House when seen from a distance, but when the idea was floated to demolish Old Parliament House so that there would be an uninterrupted vista from the New Parliament House to Lake Burley Griffin and the Australian War Memorial, there was an outcry at this idea. The historic building was preserved, and it now houses a parliamentary museum and part of the National Portrait Gallery. It is now listed as a nation building icon for the Centenary of Federation.
The original concept was for Parliament House to be freely open to the public, and the sweeping lawns leading up to the entrances were intended to symbolize this. Since the terrorist attacks of recent years, however, security at Parliament House has been greatly tightened. One measure has been the erection of crash barriers blocking access to the lawns.

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