Parliament House was being built throughout mired and senseless slaughter that was World War One. Inevitably it is as much a war memorial as a Parliament.
Building began just before War broke out - poor timing because manpower was suddenly hard to obtain.
Four and a half years later the MPs moved in. Their first day in the new chamber was in late October 1918 - just two and a half weeks before the war officially ended.
The original plan for Parliament House. A very colonial edifice. Photo: Unknown
They built just the centre and one of the two wings, scrapped the plan for cupolas, and eventually built an enormous apiary where the other wing was intended to be. Photo: VNP / Daniela Maoate-Cox
The speech from the throne to outline business was surprisingly short and almost entirely about the war: King, Empire and dominion and the coming inevitable victory. The list of legislation likely to be introduced reads like an afterthought - and even quite a bit of that was about the war.
The first question asked was about conscientious objectors.
The Hansard accounts of Parliament from that time are overwhelmingly about the war. About war expenses, soldiers, prisoners, and the impacts of war expenses.
The MPs never actually officially opened the building (because it was never completed), but they did dedicate it to the fallen. They decorated the gallery balustrade around the House with carved wooden wreaths listing New Zealand’s major battles and campaigns.
The wreaths are spaced around the balcony face beginning with Samoa to the right of the Speaker. Below them on the chamber wall are wreaths for later campaigns. Earlier wars and battles have not been added. Photo: VNP / Daniela Maoate-Cox
The wreaths start with Samoa and include all the mispronounced war graveyards of France and Belgium. Just World War one though, there is no mention of the South African (Boer) War or of any of the numerous wars and campaigns fought within New Zealand.
In the 1960s the chamber had new wreaths added for the campaigns since 1918, which have been added to periodically, including a catch-all wreath for peace keeping missions.
There are also paintings and memorial lists of MPs who died, and various artifacts.
Historian Ian McGibbon with the Versailles Pen Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
A few weeks ago, for the hundredth anniversary of the signing of the Versailles Peace Treaty the Parliamentary Library invited noted New Zealand war historian, Professor Ian McGibbon to give a lecture.
Afterwards I grabbed Ian McGibbon to ask him a few questions about one particularly odd piece of war memorabilia on public display in the foyer of Parliament House.
A pen.
It's a pen that I have described to visitors as having 'helped start World War Two'. Ian McGibbon has very different ideas. He thinks the pen says less about German history and more about our own national destiny.
The pen is what the then New Zealand Prime Minister William Massey signed the Versaille Treaty with. It was our first truly independent act as a sovereign international nation, and well before we officially became one.
You can listen (above) to Professor McGibbon tell the pens’ story and why, while it ended one war, he doesn’t believe it began another.
