The Lodge (Australia) - History

History

The Lodge is a 40-room Georgian revival style mansion, located on 18,000 square metres (4.4 acres) of landscaped grounds. The origin of its name is unknown. It was built as a temporary measure, to be occupied by whoever was the Prime Minister "until such time as a monumental Prime Minister's residence is constructed, and thereafter to be used for other purposes". The Lodge was built over the period 1926–1927 at a cost of £28,319. The architects were Percy A. Oakley and Stanley T. Parkes of Melbourne; the builder was J.G. Taylor of Sydney. Ruth Lane Poole of Melbourne was responsible for interior design and furnishing, as she had been for the Governor-General's residence, Government House. The Lodge was intended as one of a set of three official residences, the others to be for the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President (speaker) of the Senate, but the others were never built.

The first Prime Minister to live in The Lodge was Stanley Bruce. He and his wife Ethel (they had no children) moved in on 4 May 1927, five days before the official opening of the then Parliament House on 9 May. When he was Leader of the Opposition, Bruce's successor James Scullin (1929–32) had objected to the cost of running The Lodge and, true to his word, he and his wife lived at the Hotel Canberra (now the Hyatt Hotel) during his Prime Ministership. However the next Prime Minister Joseph Lyons chose The Lodge, and all subsequent Prime Ministers have used it as their primary place of residence, except for

• Ben Chifley (1945–49), who preferred the Kurrajong Hotel, where many Labor politicians of the era stayed, and where he later died.
• John Howard (1996–2007), who stayed at The Lodge when he was in Canberra for parliamentary or government business, but lived primarily at Kirribilli House, Sydney. The latter is a residence maintained for the official use of Prime Ministers when they need to perform official duties and extend official hospitality in Sydney.

When Julia Gillard became Prime Minister on 24 June 2010 after the parliamentary Labor Party decided to replace Kevin Rudd as leader, she declared that she would not move into The Lodge until she had "fulsomely earned the trust of the Australian people to be prime minister" at an election; instead, she remained living in her home in Altona in Melbourne and her flat in Canberra. Following the 2010 election at which Gillard led her party into minority government, she moved into The Lodge on 26 September 2010.

Of the three Australian Prime Ministers who have died in office, the only one to die at The Lodge was John Curtin in 1945.