The marble foyer of the Australian Parliament House is replete with Australian materials and craft, designed, the parliamentary website explains, as “a cool and tranquil space in contrast to the open and often sundrenched Forecourt. Natural light filters from windows and skylights through 48 columns clad in grey-green marble. The columns create an impression of spaces opening and closing, just as if walking through a forest. The forest of columns divides the Foyer into small bays in which people can assemble.”
But the intention does not meet the reality. The ceiling height, the overuse of white, rendering the geometric forest floor visually twigless, that the main entrance admits only high officials on ceremonial occasions, and public entry – through a side door – involves filing past X-ray machines and security personnel, therefore rendering the area an expression of power and exclusion. An officer at the reception desk called it the “marble hall,” and the Balfe song resonated as I waited:
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls
With vassals and serfs at my side,
And of all who assembled within those walls
That I was the hope and the pride.
I had riches all too great to count
And a high ancestral name…
I was in Canberra to ask Tony Burke about
