30 April 2012 - Exhibition Park Camping Ground, Canberra, ACT

We learned on the television this morning that the temperature out at the Canberra Airport this morning was a mere -0.03 degrees. No wonder it was cold in our caravan! Despite the cold and the low lying fog, we were up early and off to the parliament early under the illusion that we might participate in both a tour and observe question time in the House of Representatives today.

As it happens, the parliament will not return to session until Monday next week when the Budget will be presented to Parliament for debate and processing. There will be question time on the Tuesday immediately following and we have booked a place in the gallery. Just months ago Parliament was a-buzz with the Rudd / Gillard leadership challenge and today it is equally so for other matters; the Budget, the Speaker temporarily excluded while being investigated for alleged sexual harassment in the employment court and for unsuitable use of public funds, namely taxi travel, and the sacking of yet another member from the government party for alleged irregularities in his pre-parliamentary life. We are following these scandals with great interest and amusement in the media and perhaps will gain even a greater insight on the spot next week.

The new Parliament

We did take part in the free tour this morning and the tour guide, Eric, was a fount of knowledge, much we had learned or heard over the past few days when visiting the Museum of Australian Democracy and the National Capital Exhibition. However facts repeated in different forms burrow their way into one’s memory more securely and thus are never superfluous. We also learned a host of other information, one fact about the Australian political system that we should have known.

This is that while the House of Representatives is on an electorate / per capita basis, the Senate is arranged on a set number of senators per state, which means that little Tasmania has the same number of representatives in the Senate as does Victoria, twelve for each state, and two for each of the two mainland territories, making a total of seventy six members. The senators serve for six years, half retiring every three years when the other house’s members come up for re-election. The House of Representatives has 150 members, twice the number as the senate.

The new Parliament, operating since 1988, is a simply marvellous place. It is set on a 32 hectare site on Capitol Hill. Just as the design for the Provisional Parliament was put out for competitive bidding, so was this. An American of Italian heritage, Ronaldo Giurgola, won the privilege of designing this great building and did a wonderful job, so fine and grand with the marble, beautiful timbers, tapestries and other art, the courtyards filled with lovely trees, the open glass roofs, the grass covered roofs and the wonderful static displays for the education of the public. Unlike its predecessor, this was designed to last two hundred years, not just the fifty.

Here too is another copy of the Magna Carta, but this time, one of the four surviving 1297 originals, purchased for 12,500 pounds Stirling in 1952 from Kings School in Bruton, Somerset. It is now priceless and is on permanent display under a very secure glass case.

The two chambers have of course much in common with the traditional design of the Provisional Parliament, and the State Parliaments we have visited earlier. However the green and red interior décor is more subdued and more in tune with the natural colours of the Australian landscape rather than matching the parliament of Great Britain. And here in the new parliament the public gallery caters for far greater numbers and then, above the public and media galleries are glass lined sound proof areas all around the chamber to cater for school parties, so that their inevitable chatter will not disturb the business being undertaken below.

We spent some time wandering about the building after the tour, but lunch was calling so we left, drove to our special parking place above the aboriginal tent embassy and again watched the smoke polluting the otherwise perfect autumn day. Refuelled, we drove to the Art Gallery and resumed our soaking in of culture, starting with the exhibition of work by Eugene von Guerard. We have seen his work all around Victoria in various museums, and there was some duplication here, in that the Victorian galley had loaned some works to supplement this exhibition. There were also works from private collectors as far away as England and a host of work we had not seen before. We thoroughly enjoyed this collection as much, if not more, than any other opportunity we previously had.

We also took in the sculpture gallery down in the basement where we saw both the most valuable and the oldest art works held by the gallery. Constantin Bancusi’s (1876 – 1957) Birds in Space were purchased in 1973 and today these two abstract “birds” are worth about $360 million! They are lovely but really?!!

The oldest piece, a storage jar from the Yangshao Culture dating back to 5000 – 3000 BC, sits in a case alongside a Japanese storage vessel dating between 2500 – 1500 BC and a Korean vessel from between 42 and 562 AD. They are all in impeccable order and proof that Asian culture was so far more advanced than our own European culture.

My eyes were starting to glaze over and my feet tired, so we turned for home, deciding to return a third day to complete our exploration of this wonderful art gallery.