The second feature is the modernity of Parliament House, Canberra. It is just
a quarter-century old. Indeed, this anniversary passed almost without notice,
indicating a certain imperviousness on the part of Australians to historical
landmarks. The preceding Provisional Parliament House deliberately sought
to emphasize its derivation from Westminster and other parliaments of the
empire, symbolized by the Speaker’s chair fashioned from timbers from HMS
Victory. The new Parliament House—opened in 1988 and intended to have a
life of two centuries—is defiantly Australian. Except for marble imported from
Italy, all the building materials are local. And there is plenty of space. The
chambers of the two Houses are so large that even when everyone is present,
they still seem half-empty. Churchill’s dictum of October 1943, that chambers
should be designed so that business is readily transacted in an atmosphere
of discussion and conversation, has been assiduously ignored. Internal TV
means that all proceedings can be followed in the spacious suites of senators
and members.
The parliaments of Westminster and Ottawa are built in the Gothic style.
They may once have beenfit for purpose but such a claim is rarely made
these days. Functionality, so stark in Canberra, is barely obvious in these
dignified, graceful buildings. Walking their corridors is like a walk through
history. Both buildings are said to be badly in need of very major and
extremely expensive repair.
It is nearly seventy years since the Palace of Westminster was rebuilt after
the Commons side had been bombed during the Second World War. And it is
nearly a century since the Parliament Building in Ottawa was rebuilt after the
Great War and thefire of 1919. Plans in the 1990s to gut the building in two
phases did not proceed and so the task is yet to be undertaken.
14.6 The Public Service and the Civil Service
Soon after Federation, the Commonwealth parliament passed a Public Service
Act. Even at the time there was no strong sentiment that Australia was
following a British path. There were, undeniably, some similarities. Official
heads of departments were called‘secretaries’, more or less after the Whitehall
style, and the public service itself was meant to be politically impartial with
recruitment based on merit, not patronage (or spoils). But the new service, in
many respects, was extensively influenced by North American practice. The
spirit of scientific management, the‘new science of management’, permeated
the legislation and the manner in which the service was shaped by its formid-
able commissioner, Duncan McLachlan. It was a stark illustration that the new
nation was not dominated by British legacies and was conspicuously open to
adaptation of practice elsewhere.
Australia’s Distinctive Governance