LEGISLATIVE ANTIQUE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19905, 27 September 1926, Page 5

LEGISLATIVE ANTIQUE.

NEW SOUTH WALES UPPER HOUSE. RENOVATION PROCEEDING. (From Ocb Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, September IG. Architecturally, if not politically, the Upper House of New South Wales is the legislative antique of Australia. The Labour Government is threatening to abolish it, but if it delays too long the execution of this threat the indications are that the building will take the matter into its own hands, and fall to pieces through sheer old age and decay. If it should collapse—a catastrophe which its officers and ’members have sometimes feared —or. worse still, if its wooden and hessian wails should catch fire, the panic in the great Public Hospital alongside of it, can bo imagined. In the neglect of this antiquated building, which is a blot on Macquarie street, one of Sydney’s few really fine thoroughfares, not a few in the community possibly are inclined to read the Government’s determination to get rid of the Upper Chamber for good. Erected 70 years ago, workmen Lave been patching it up for years now. They are again on the job. About IS months ago four pillars were erected to support the roof. Since then the wall nearest the hospital has moved out wards several inchss, because of the weight of the roof. No fewer than U new pillars are now being erected to carry the weight of extraordinarily heavy galvanised iron, coming session the august Legislative Councillars will have to peer through a forest f Oregon beams to see thsir colleagues or to catch the eye of the Presidsnt. The Upper House, threatened politically, and by reason of its old age, is indeed in a sad plight The busts of some of its sturdy old ebam pions of other days have been removed from their pedestals for the convenience of the renovators. The busts of Wentworth and one or two others have bean mercifully blindfolded with linen bags. If Wentworth could see his head in a bag in the Legisla tive Council to-dav he would stir uncasilv in his grave.