As plans for the High Court building in Canberra emerged, it became know as the “Gar Mahal” – a reference to Chief Justice Sir Garfield Barwick the driving force behind the building and the magnificent Taj Mahal in India.
At the time of opening the building was described as “an obscene waste of public money”.
The project had its critics from the start, but Barwick and others overcame them.
Barwick’s determination went back a long way. He had been appointed Attorney-General by Prime Minister Robert Menzies after the 1958 election. From that position he became a leading advocate of a building for the High Court in Canberra. But the then Chief Justice, Sir Owen Dixon, was opposed to it. Dixon thought the court had a duty travel to the state capitals to help litigants avoid the expense of either taking their counsel to the permanent court or of engaging new counsel just for the High Court appeal. Dixon retired in 1964 and Barwick succeeded him.
Barwick, the leading advocate at the Bar, continued his advocacy of the cause for the move to Canberra. He thought also that the court’s accommodation was unsatisfactory when it travelled. He said in 1976, “We never manage to get a room for every judge. They share chambers, sometimes three to a room, and in one state in particular their staff are out in the corridors, and that’s been going on for a long time and why our forefathers, or my predecessors, tolerated it I don’t know.” Barwick thought that the court should be in the capital close to, but separate, from the Parliament.
He got his way. The transfer to Canberra was announced by Barwick’s successor as Attorney-General, Nigel Bowen, in March 1968. The competition for the building was announced in May, 1972.
Barwick nursed the project from the start.
He told the National Press Club in 1976, “You have to watch an architect like a cat watching a mouse, when it comes to any specialist building. I mean, even in a house you never know, he’ll hang the door the wrong way or put the handle in the wrong place but in the case of a court they had no idea of what a court needed, what its function was.”
He said the Supreme Court in Washington was beautiful on the outside, “but inside it is non-functional, no good at all for the uses of the court”.
Barwick was on the construction site frequently.
During construction, costs rose substantially, drawing media criticism of the project and Barwick. The initial cost of the building in April 1975 was $18.4 million. At completion it was $49.1 million. The then Minister for the Capital Territory, Bob Ellicott, said significant design changes regarding security, partitioning, acoustic treatment and special doors had added $3 million. The rest had been due to inflation of building material and labour. However, others blamed Barwick’s demand for changes for cost overruns.
No-one could ever substantiate a precise figure for the extra cost that resulted from Barwick’s constant attention during construction, but it must have been several million dollars.
Just before the court’s completion Barwick said he was happy with the aesthetics, the outside, and the inside functionality. He said, “It’s just the opposite of the Opera House. The Opera House was built from the outside in and this has been built from the inside out. . . . It’s something new for Canberra – to have this sense of space in a building. It’s not a classical building. It’s an Australian building – filled with space and light.”
But after the opening, Justice Lionel Murphy told the National Press Club on 22 May, 1980, “I tell you this though, in that building which may be magnificent in the public parts of it inside – and it depends on your viewpoint what you think of the outside of it – but if you get up into where, the real work is to be done and that’s in the area of the judges, particularly that of their staff, you’ll be astonished at how cramped the quarters of the staff are in that building which has an abundance of space in it.”
Lawyers hated the idea of a move to Canberra. Their opposition culminated in an article in the June, 1980, edition of Law News, the official journal of the Law Council of Australia which represents every law society and bar association in Australia.
Under the heading “Cut off in Canberra”, the article signed by “A Practitioner” said, “To a very large extent Canberra is a city of politics, bureaucracy and diplomacy; a city which governs rather than a city which is governed. The High Court judges who live in Canberra are inevitably going to live in and be exposed to the influences of this political-bureaucratic-diplomatic thinking. Inevitably they will be big figures on the diplomatic cocktail party circuit. Unconscious reactions and attitudes cannot but be influenced by the milieu in which one lives and moves. For our High Court judges, deciding cases for all Australia, it is to be a milieu other than that in which most Australians live.”
However, Barwick never got his way on having all judges reside in Canberra and that the court sit only in Canberra. The court goes on circuit to the more remote capitals as it did before and hears special leave applications in Sydney and Melbourne. Barwick’s hope for an official residence for the Chief Justice at Lanyon Homestead on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River just outside Canberra also came to naught.
The opening of the building was boycotted by Australian Democrat Senators because of the cost. A statement by Democrats Leader Senator Don Chipp said, “We feel obliged to register our protest at the extraordinary escalation of the cost of this building. . . . This is an obscene waste of public money at a time of supposed austerity.’’
But the criticism has faded. The building is seldom referred to as the Gar Mahal.
As Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser said at the opening, “The driving force behind the concept has been the present Chief Justice of Australia. This building bears testimony to Sir Garfield’s vision, energy and imagination and will stand as a memorial to the high standards of Australian designers and builders, craftsmen and artists. It is a building which will attract a growing national pride as the years pass. All, too often, in the design of modern buildings, we are left with a functional result with little else to commend it. On this occasion, the pursuit of function and excellence has been rigorous and successful.”