Located on the main floor of the Old Parliament House building and across the Opposition (northern) lobby from the Senate Chamber the Senate Opposition Party Room evokes a rich character in its warm timber panelling, frosted-glass-fronted bookcases and the convivial groupings of its generous furniture.
Probably the most common type of enquiry received by the research staff at the Australian Prime Ministers Centre are family history enquiries. If there is a parliamentarian in your family tree, we can help you find out about their political career.
An unusual aspect of the museum’s Killen collection is a large group of ties, selected from several hundred in his wardrobe when Lady Benise Killen donated Sir James’ memorabilia to the museum.
The family of Sir James Killen has given the museum a collection of his political memorabilia and the complete contents of Sir James’ library.
In recent months the museum has acquired a rare and important new suffragette item: a hunger strike medal belonging to British woman Charlotte Blacklock.
Andrew Moffat was born in Marrickville, Sydney, in 1914, and was recorded, at the age of 96, for a pilot oral history project about rank-and-file political party activists being run by the museum in cooperation with the National Library of Australia.
The museum has recently acquired an exciting new object which will help us tell the story of how women in Britain acquired the vote.
A Special Constable’s truncheon and armband in the museum’s collection reminds us of a time of widespread civil unrest in Australia.
A recently acquired example of Suffragette Jewellery
The Museum of Australian Democracy’s Oral History collection contains a wealth of personal recollection and insight into the building and its people during the era when it was home to the federal parliament.
Our labour of Hercules, which in many ways resembled both a mental and physical boot camp, has been to retrieve all designated volumes from storage, ensure they are registered in our collection database and put them on display
The Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House has recently acquired a rare pamphlet by the Polish Marxist Rosa Luxembourg for its research collection.
The APMC catalogue has been uploaded to Trove, the National Library’s discovery service that enables you to search online across hundreds of Australian collections.
How did Australian politicians of the nineteenth century campaign, in the days before today’s pervasive electronic media? They went to where people gathered in their daily lives, and held political meetings in gathering places such as pubs, Mechanic’s Institutes, and open air venues such as a local park or even under a particular tree.
In October 1982, the artist Tom Thompson ventured from his home in Braidwood to depict proceedings of the House of Representatives at Parliament House in Canberra. The Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House recently acquired the collection of sketches.
Just as visitors to museums may develop an attachment to certain objects, so too do curators. Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House curator Corinne Perkins loves the Cromwell coin, which dates back to the period of the English Civil Wars (1642-52).
A recent addition to our collection is this photo, taken in 1911, of the Bathurst Football Club rugby union team, including future prime minister of Australia J. B. Chifley.
As Australia went onto a war footing, seventy years ago the Australian Parliament readied itself for action. Today, the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House remembers the beginning of the Second World War.
We’ve recently acquired an important item for our collection. The photo album, ‘Views of Sydney’, is a handsome leather-bound volume of photographs, largely of Federation arches, taken in Sydney and Melbourne in 1901.
The introduction of the Lamson tubes into Provisional Parliament House has been attributed to Senator George Pearce.
