556 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION H. 



or Brisbane, or Port Darwiu. We are oblivious of the 30 degrees 

 of latitude over which this island continent extends, and that 

 conditions of climate differ comparatively as much between Nor- 

 manton and Warrnambool as they do between St. Petersburgh 

 and Cairo ; and yet we apparently and inconsistently assimilate 

 our modes of living and the construction of our dwelling houses 

 and public buildings over this vast area that Nature treats so 

 consistently. 



Capital City Competition. 



An event, probably the most noticeable of the year, and one in 

 which all our professions are interested, is the designing of the 

 capital city at Canberra, and the competition invited by the Go- 

 vernment for the same, calling for, as it necessarily must, the 

 special functions of the engineer, the architect, and the surveyor. 

 The result, we must admit, is not on the whole unsatisfactory, as 

 several very fine designs have been secured, but as to the associa- 

 tion of Australian professional men with the designing, very un- 

 satisfactory. I attribute the cause of this partly to a mistaken decision 

 of the Cabinet, and partly to the concerted and narrow action of 

 the Australian institutes. This leads me to ask the question. Are 

 the Institutes of Architects, at any rate, pursuing a reasonable 

 course in laying down conditions that, in most cases of public com- 

 petition, the parties inviting the competition cannot, in the nature 

 of their trust, be expected to wholly comply with ? I am speaking 

 now of insistence upon final adjudication, exclusively by an ad- 

 judicator, or adjudicators, as the case may be, and not by those 

 upon whom the subsequent responsibility as to expenditure rests. 

 The position taken up by the Royal Institute, and its associated 

 institutes in Australia, is perfectly clear, but I ask is it within the 

 range of practical ethics to insist dogmatically upon this, resulting^ 

 in the enforced exclusion of their members as competitors in the 

 case of the capital city competition ? It surely was not in the least 

 degree likely that the Commonwealth Government, with its pro- 

 jected expenditures of millions, upon a model city, would surrender 

 its selection and its judgment into the hands of a Board of ad- 

 judicators whose responsibility ceases on delivery of its report and 

 selection. The Government should, in this case, of course, bind 

 itself to engage the most expert skill available to advise, and then 

 to be guided by such advice. It must be conceded that the Go- 

 vernment did take such a step, and, I believe, with a result gener- 

 ally satisfactory; it however made the serious mistake of not 

 definitely announcing in the first instance, and when the com- 

 petition was invited, the 2^^^'sofinel of such a Board, so that in- 

 tending competitors might at that stage be content, or not con- 

 tent, to compete. On the other hand, the Royal British and the 

 State institutes were, I think, equally at fault, in not placing more 

 confidence in the obviously straight intentions of the Govermnent, 



