by Samantha and Hayley

Old Parliament House was opened in 1927 and was always intended only to be a temporary building which they thought they would use for 50 years.  It was replaced in 1988  by New Parliament House which was built on Capital Hill behind the old building.  There were some wonderful pictures on the wall of Old Parliament House being built and there are flocks of sheep and farmers cutting hay just behind it.  It looked quite strange  - like a huge important building into he middle of farmland.  I think the sheep must have been very surprised.

Here are Brendon and John looking at OLD Parliament House from NEW Parliament House!

As we walked up the red carpet we were astonished by the architecture inside.  Everything was wooden with marble floors.  We visited the Senate first.  In the Senate everything was very old and worn out and red.  At the end of a long table there was a large wooden chair where the President of the Senate sits.  our tour guide informed us that because the wooden chair was so heavy the craftsmen had to install it bit by bit in the Senate.  It was too old and valuable and expensive to move to the New Parliament House building, and it would have looked a bit funny in among all that modern stuff in the new Senate.  When the building was first built there were only 36 Senators who had to use the Senate.  By 1988 when the Senate last sat there, there were 76 of them squashed into almost the same space!

Next we took a tour of the House of Representatives.  A pretend Mace was at the end of the table and the Speaker's Chair was at the other end.  The House of Representatives was also very old and worn out like the Senate, though it was green.  The Speaker's chair was a gift form the British. It includes pieces of timber from Nelson's flagship the Victory and also from Westminster Hall, where the British Parliament is held.  It symbolises Australia's links with British history.  The tour guide pointed out that if we because a Republic our Mace would have to be changed because it has a crown on the end of it and the crown represents the position of the Queen in our Parliament.  When Old Parliament House opened in 1927, there were only 76 Members who sat in the House of Representatives.  By 1988 there were 148 of them.  Some new seats were added, but it still would have been a tight squeeze when there were all sitting and their offices were also tiny and overcrowded.  They really needed a new Parliament House to fit them all in.

We asked the tour guide why the House of Representatives and the Senate are the colours that they are.  She replied that the reason was that it was the colours used in the United Kingdom's Parliament
and because we follow the United Kingdom's form of Government, we use the same colours.

We moved on to the Prime Minister's office.  It was at the front of Old Parliament House looking over the entrance.  This was so he could see an protests or other things that were happening, though his desk was in a place where he would have had his back to the window and could ignore it all if he wanted to.  In the wall there was a tiny peephole so that the secretary could see if the Prime Minister was busy or not  (or perhaps asleep!) so she would not interrupt anything important or private.

Next we visited a room where Cabinet Meetings were held.  We waited in the waiting room while out tour guide explained to us about the Prime Ministers of the past, such as Edmund Barton, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating.  Then she unlocked a 20cm thick metal door which led into the Cabinet Room.  The door was really thick because the meeting that were held in the room were so private that no one should hear them from the outside.  There is a legend though that says that the journalists who had their offices above the Cabinet Room would climb out onto the roof and put their ears to the ventilation ducts of the Cabinet Room and hear what was going on!  Like all legends, we're not sure whether that's true or not.  When we entered the room there was a big circular table with a hole in the middle. The round table was meant to show that noone was more important than anyone else in a Cabinet Meeting.

Next we went to a room which used to have the books of the Australian Constitution in it.  There was also a safe in a secret compartment in the wall.  You could open the secret compartment by presssing a pedal under the floor.  You had to feel around on the floor with your foot to activate it.  Our tour guide didn't open the actual safe because she didn't know the code and it was very old and rusted.  I hope all the important papers have been moved to New Parliament House or they'll never get the out now.

We saw other rooms in Old Parliament House as well, including the Opposition Party Room, the President of the Senate's Office and the Ministerial Party Room.  It was all very old.

Out the front of Old Parliament House is the site of the Aboriginal Embassy.  The Aboriginal people have been associated with the area of the Embassy for centuries, and many ancient Aboriginal artifacts were recovered when building and landscaping Old Parliament House.

The first Aboriginal protest at the Site took place in 1927 when Old Parliament House was opened. Two senior Aboriginal men made personal protests against the building of Old Parliament House on land which they said was theirs.  More recently the site became a focus for all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people when a camp was set up there to highlight their struggle for land rights in Australia. It has become an important site for meeting and education.

Old Parliament House was a fascinating place to visit and compare with New Parliament House.