Topic summary
Australian parliament
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Parliament of Australia.
Temporary home in Melbourne (1901–1927)
The Commonwealth of Australia came into being on 1 January 1901 with the federation of the six Australian colonies.The inaugural election took place on 29 and 30 March and the first Australian Parliament was opened on 9 May 1901 in Melbourne by Prince George, Duke of Cornwall and York, later King George V. The only building in Melbourne that was large enough to accommodate the 14,000 guests was the western annexe of the Royal Exhibition Building. After the official opening, from 1901 to 1927 the Parliament met in Parliament House, Melbourne, which it borrowed from the Parliament of Victoria (which sat, instead, in the Royal Exhibition Building until 1927). During this time, Sir Frederick Holder became the first speaker and also the first (and thus far only) parliamentarian to die during a sitting. On 23 July 1909, during an acrimonious debate that had extended through the night to 5 am, Holder exclaimed: "Dreadful, dreadful!" before collapsing as a result of a cerebral haemorrhage.