Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing and Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

Tomorrow marks the centenary of the launch of the competition to design the national capital city of Australia. On 24 May 1911 the Minister for Home Affairs, King O'Malley, announced an international competition for the design. In 1899 the colonial premiers had decided that the permanent capital would be in New South Wales, not less than 100 miles from Sydney, and a congress was held in Melbourne four months after Federation in 1901 on the planning of a capital. Dalgety was first chosen as the site of the future capital in 1904, but four years later the Canberra-Yass region was selected as a replacement. The selected site for the Australian Capital Territory was transferred to the Commonwealth of Australia in January 1911.

Half a world away in Chicago, two architects, whose names subsequently would come to be associated with Australia forever, had married. Walter Burley Griffin qualified as an architect in 1901, subsequently working with Frank Lloyd Wright and conducting his practice when Wright went to Japan, before starting his own practice. Marion Lucy Mahony, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had also been employed in Wright's office, and later by Hermann von Hoist when Wright eloped to Europe in 1909. They were major proponents of the 'prairie' school of architecture:

I am what may be termed a naturalist in architecture … I believe in architecture that is the logical outgrowth of the environment in which the building in mind is to be located.

It was while the Griffins were on their honeymoon that they learnt of the competition. According to a report in the New York Times of 2 June 1912, after the announcement that Griffin had won the competition and the $8,750 prize:

Mr Griffin spent two months in work upon his plans, and finally submitted thirteen drawings, five feet by thirty inches in diameter. These included a lay-out of the central district of the city, a general plan of the city and its environs, long sections through the city in two-directions, and a prospective bird's eye view of the city from Mount Ainslie.

Marion Mahony's impressive drawings and renderings of the plan no doubt helped the judges to select the Americans from the 137 entries in the competition, despite neither having ever visited Australia. Speaking after the announcement in 1912, Griffin said:

I have planned a city not like any other city in the world. I have planned it not in a way that I expected any governmental authorities in the world would accept. I have planned an ideal city—a city that meets my ideal of the city of the future.

With unknowing prescience Griffin added:

"I do not know to what extent my plan will be carried out. The Australian authorities may merely adopt my ground plan and fill in the architectural details to suit themselves. However, if my plan is carried out in all its details, I think the Australian capital will be the most beautiful city in history.

"I do not know whether I shall be called to Australia to superintend the construction of the new city. I hope so. I rather expect I shall. It would be only fair to me. There is nobody in the world who can work out my ideas like myself.

Technical problems with the transmission of sound having occurred—

Sitting suspended from 18:32 to 18:34

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