Perth Voice Interactive

RARELY seen chambers and off-limits corridors in WA’s parliament house will be opened to the public for this year’s Perth Heritage Days.

Just as Canberra’s parliament is arming guards with semi-automatic weapons and restricting visitors’ privileges, WA’s parliament is preparing to let people into prestigious surrounds of the members’ library (built as a grand ballroom but never used), the members’ corridor and even the swank dining room. The chambers—usually limited to a peek from the public gallery above—will also be completely accessible.

“They’re the business areas of parliament,” says parliamentary information and education director Kat Galvin, often too packed with pollies and apparatchiks for public tours.

With a lot of Heritage Day stuff geared towards the upcoming war centenary, parliament house’s role in the war will be on show.

While a lot of authority was nested in the still-new federal government, the state parliament was still responsible for trade legislation, anti-profiteering laws and rationing rules.

Ms Galvin says it also had to come up with rules to deal with the flood of “benevolent groups” popping up to raise money for the war. “There was no control over that,” Ms Galvin says. “A lot were saying they were Red Cross,” but many weren’t.

Re-enactors from the 10th Light Horse Regiment will also be there in full regalia and with authentic ‘Waler’ horses used in the era. The 10th was infamously massacred in the World War I Battle of the Nek, despite protestations of commander Noel Brazier who’d attempted to call off the charge saying “the whole thing was nothing but bloody murder”.

The British top brass didn’t listen and 372 of 600 soldiers in the 3rd brigade died. Fewer than 10 Turks died in the exchange.

The house is open 10am to 4pm on October 19 and the 10th rides again at 11am.

by DAVID BELL