Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would also like to make another short statement. Today marks 90 years since the Australian Parliament met here in the national capital for the first time at provisional Parliament House, or Old Parliament House as we know it, on 9 May 1927. To mark the occasion of that historic first Canberra meeting the House of Representatives was presented with the two ornately decorated dispatch boxes which rest here on the table of the House, as a personal gift from His Majesty King George V. They were presented to the Speaker, Sir Littleton Groom, by the then Duke of York at Parliament House in Melbourne on 26 April 1927 as the parliament was finalising arrangements for the relocation to Canberra.

Now as then, the dispatch boxes contain religious texts for use by members when making their oath of allegiance following their election to the House. What is perhaps not so widely known is that the dispatch boxes on the table today are exact replicas of those that lay on the table of the United Kingdom House of Commons for many years prior to their loss when the Commons chamber was destroyed in an air raid during the Second World War, in fact on 10 May 1941. For that chamber’s reopening in 1950, the Commons received replacement dispatch boxes as a gift from New Zealand, with a design based on the boxes here at the table completing the circle of parliamentary tradition.

Twenty-two prime ministers and 27 leaders of the opposition are among those who have addressed the House from the dispatch boxes. In these 90 years, they have become an enduring symbol of our Australian system of parliamentary democracy. They serve as a reminder of our parliamentary inheritance and of our continuing strong link between this House and the House of Commons at Westminster.