PRIME MINISTER
CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY EMBARGOED UNTIL DELIVERY
PARLIAMENTARY DINNER ON THE OCCASION
OF THE FIRST SITTINGS IN THE
NEW PARLIAMENT HOUSE
MONDAY, 22 AUGUST 1988
Excellencies,
Madam Speaker,
Mr President,
Distinguished guests,
Parliamentary colleagues past and present,
Representatives of Australian Parliaments and
of Parliaments throughout the World
Ladies and Gentlemen
It is a pleasure to welcome you all to Australia's new
Parliament House on the day of Parliament's first meeting
here.
According to the architects, this building has been
constructed to last for two hundred years.
And after all the effort and disruption of moving from our
former Parliament, I am sure we will all appreciate that
breathing space.
This Great Hall has already proven its worth as the
ceremonial heart of our new and permanent Parliament House.
It was here that the Queen opened this building on 9 May,
and it was here that Parliament has already hosted a number
of important functions for foreign leaders visiting
Australia to participate in our Bicentennial celebrationsthe
King and Queen of Spain, and the Prime Ministers of
Japan, Ireland, the United Kingdom and last week New
Zealand. So it is high time that tonight the guest of honour in
Parliament's Great Hall be Parliament itself members of
Parliament, presiding officers, parliamentary staff: in
short the men and women who today embody and bear the
responsibility for upholding the great institution of
Parliamentary democracy.
.1 3 2~ 4
Those of our guests tonight who are making their first visit
to Canberra may appreciate less vividly than those who
return here each Parliamentary session just how far Canberra
has come since the first sitting was held in the old
building in 1927.
As we take up office in a great new building situated in the
heart of a vigorous and established city, we would do well
to recall that six decades ago the first Secretary of the
Prime Minister's Department could comment that the best view
of Canberra is " from the back of the departing train".
An historian of Canberra has written that in 1927 Parliament
House and East and West Blocks stood out starkly in a dusty
plain criss-crossed with roads seemingly leading nowhere,
through paddocks fully planted with trees.
The population of Canberra then was just under 6,000 people.
A timber cottage could be rented for two pounds a week.
And remuneration of Federal politicians stood at just under
pounds a week.
That salary may seem inadequate but we must remember that
those were prohibition days and liquor could not legally be
purchased in Canberral
For those Members and Senators who became accustomed to
working out of offices the size of broom closets in the old
building, the dimensions of this new building and the
quality of its finish will take some getting used to.
Those who enjoyed the cheek by jowl intimacy which the old
place enforced and I count myself among them will have
to make sure the new building captures and retains some of
that atmosphere.
And even though there have been one or two teething problems
maybe more than two I am confident the new building will
succeed in becoming as effective and as friendly as the old
one was.
It was very fitting that when Parliament met this afternoon
we passed a resolution extending our thanks to all those men
and women whose care and dedication have created a building
of magnificent qualities.
we also passed a notion expressing our thanks to all those
people, from within Australia and from overseas, whose gifts
adorn this building. It is my pleasure to echo those thanks
tonight in particular to the representatives of foreign
Parliaments present this evening.
As a symbol of the growth of Canberra, as a proof of our
national confidence, above all as a solid and enduring
testament of our commitment to the system of parliamentary
democracy, the importance of this building cannot be
overstated. 1325
When I spoke at the official opening of this building in May
I made mention of the ghosts or spirits of the past the
earliest inhabitants of this region the Aboriginal people,
those who created the Australian Federation and who served
in the first Parliament House in Melbourne, and those of our
more immediate predecessors who served the Australian people
as Members of Parliament in what was courageously, and as it
turned out accurately, termed the provisional Parliament
House. The distinguished presence of those parliamentary spirits
places a heavy responsibility on those of us who are their
successors. It will be our job over this and succeeding sessions to
imbue this new building with the best elements of their
robust and vigorous parliamentary tradition.
We must ensure the continued development of this nation as a
home for all Australians and for all who come to live in
this country. I believe it is a fundamental strength of our
legal and political institutions, and of our community at
large, that we have an openness, a tolerance and an
encouragement of individual expression and endeavour which
will enable us successfully to meet the many challenges
awaiting Australia in the future.
It is worth recalling that one of the significant design
features of this Parliament House is its invitation to
visitors to observe, and to participate in, the democratic
process. I hope that as many Australians as possible will
accept that invitation. And it is encouraging to know that
thousands and thousands of people from around Australia and
from overseas have already done so.
I said at the outset that the architects intended this
building to last for two hundred years.
I amn sure it will though, of course, none of us will be
here to find out.
In two hundred years time, when Australians celebrate their
quater-centenary, the four hundredth anniversary of the
arrival of the First Fleet they will perhaps pause to look
at the events of the Bicentennial.
No doubt our clothing and speech will look quaint to our
successors and many of the political issues which excite us
today will have receded out of sight.
But these successors will I hope appreciate at least one
fact about us: the fact that we in 1988 were possessed of
such a commitment to the principles of democratic government
that we were prepared to build this building to enshrine and
to advance those principles.
i t
Today, after all the planning, all the hard work of design
and construction, all the fitting out, and all the rigors of
the move from the old Parliament House, we completed the
ceremonial elements of the initiation of this new building.
Tomorrow we will be getting down to the real business of
this new building.
As we go about that business, we must make good the
underlying principle of these democratic chambers: that a
people are best governed when they govern themselves. 1: 27