This week we had our Future Shapers Canberra experience! It only lasted for 28 hours but that was enough time to get a tour of Parliament House, have a chat with Hon Catherine King, Federal Minister for Ballarat and spend a few hours with our contemporaries from another leadership group in Regional Victoria.
Canberra is a pretty surreal place. It’s so clean and manicured that it reminds me of that movie ‘Pleasantville’. All the people look so purposeful and well composed. There is so much more colour in the wardrobes of Canberra compared to Melbourne’s black uniform. The serious security guards dotted throughout make you feel like you need to constantly be on your best behaviour, which you do because you're at Parliament!
Not surprisingly you can’t walk around parliament without an escort so we were greeted by members of Catherine King's team who were our hosts for the day. Parliament House itself is an amazing building. It should be since it cost $1.1billion dollars to build when it opened back in 1988. Everything inside Parliament house is custom. All of the furniture and fixtures are purposefully designed. It has one of the most impressive art collections I’ve ever seen with every hall, wall and room featuring incredible artwork.
We landed on a sitting day so we all (quietly) piled into watch question time. I think most of our cohort were curious about what they were going to see after our earlier visit this year to the Victorian State question time which was a total shit show. Thank goodness it felt like a slightly more respectful space. It could’ve just been the session we we’re watching but there was at least one instance of an MP asking another MP a question that was actually answered.
Most of the questions were either the Labour party asking the Labour party to talk about something great they’re doing or the opposition grilling the Treasurer about ‘sticky’ interest rates. I’m still not 100% convinced that question time is necessary. It feels like a ‘play’ for the media so they have something to show on the news that night more than anything else. It was pretty neat sitting in the same room with the PM Anthony Albanese or ‘Albo’, Bill Shorten, Tanya Plibersek and lots of other faces that I recognised from the news but have no idea who they are!
After Question Time we got to spend an hour with the Hon Catherine King which was super interesting. To be honest I didn’t know a heck of alot about Australian politics, especially Federal but she is an incredibly impressive woman. Her calm confidence and intelligence is inspiring. She has been a Federal MP since 2004 and has pretty much seen it all.
One of the points Catherine made, more than once, was how much she appreciated her team. It's easy to think that MP’s just know all the things but there are ten’s if not 100’s of people constantly working behind the scenes to make sure that Catherine has the most relevant and correct information as possible. When Parliament House is at full capacity there are between 4,000 to 5,000 people who work there. Isn’t that’s incredible!
The bureaucracy of the government at all levels has always astounded me. As someone who makes lots of decisions and is a big believer in getting ideas out and tested quickly, I would find being in government incredibly frustrating.
I asked Catherine if this bothered her and it didn’t. After 20 years in the job she knows how best to navigate the system and the system is there for a reason. Each member of parliament roughly represents 110,000 people. That’s lots of people to consider and as the lawmakers of this country, what they do should be scrutinised.
Canberra, and Parliament House in particular is a surreal place. It really does exist in this bubble. We spent some time at the National Press Club where they refer to Parliament House as the ‘Spaceship’ because it's like nothing on earth. I quite like the strangeness of it all. When you consider what these people do for a living, I’m glad they have this weird and wonderful space to do it.
The contemporary building with all its amazing art and beautifully manicured grounds will hopefully inspire the best in all the humans (and they are just humans, exactly like you and me) who represent us. Well, you, because I’m still not a citizen but you get my point.
