had an official residence, Stornoway. Australia instituted an allowance for
the Leader of the Opposition in 1920. The explanation in this instance placed
much emphasis on the volume of extra work which fell to the Opposition
leader (a work value rationale not surprisingly put by the Prime Minister,
W. M. Hughes, a former trade unionist). The UK did not follow suit until
1937 (an allowance which, until the 1970s, used to cut out upon the dissol-
ution of the House of Commons unless the occupant was also a former prime
minister).
No appraisal of the Australian parliament would be complete without ref-
erence to its architecture. There are two critical points in which it differs from
those of the UK and Canada. Thefirst has marked both of the two buildings
the parliament has occupied in Canberra since 1927. The current building is
more than all-embracing. It includes the two chambers of the Houses. This is
typical of Anglosphere parliaments and legislatures and a contrast with con-
tinental practice where the Houses often have separate buildings; in Paris, the
Palais Luxembourg (Sénat) and the Palais Bourbon (Assemblée Nationale) do
not even share a metro line.
Parliament House also accommodates the executive branch of government,
including the Cabinet room as well as the offices of the prime minister, all
ministers, and parliamentary secretaries; ministers only very occasionally, and
then almost invariably ostentatiously, work in the departments. In this sense,
its design is an unusual physical manifestation of Bagehot’s precept about the
joining of the legislative and executive parts of government. (The building
also draws on Bagehot in the sharpness with which the dignified—perhaps
better seen as the rowdy—and the efficient parts of the government are
separated.)
Though the judiciary has a separate building of its own, down the hill on
the shores of Lake Burley Griffin, the fourth estate—newspapers, radio and
television, and related media—have afloor of their own on the top of the
Senate side of the building.
Such physical concentration of the apex of the political life of a nation is
unmatched in either London or Ottawa, or many other parliamentary juris-
dictions. In London, even members of the House of Commons do not neces-
sarily have offices in the Palace of Westminster. The Cabinet itself meets at No.
10 Downing Street, half a kilometre away, where the prime minister’soffice is
located. Ministers have their main offices in departments. The media in its
various forms is accommodated in numerous buildings around Westminster
and elsewhere in London.
In Ottawa, what can be found in one building in Canberra is spread around
the Parliament Building itself, East and West Block, and various buildings
along Wellington Street. The media is accommodated further down the hill,
in buildings along Sparks Street Mall.
J. R. Nethercote