Inside the Canberra Press Gallery: Life in the Wedding Cake of Old Parliament House

Before

television, radio, and later the internet came to dominate the coverage of

Australian politics, the Canberra Press Gallery existed in a world far

removed from today’s 24-hour news cycle, spin doctors and carefully scripted

sound bites.

This historical memoir of a career reporting from The Wedding Cake of Old

Parliament House offers a rare insider’s perspective on both how the gallery

once operated and its place in the Australian body politic.

Using some of the biggest political developments of the past fifty years as

a backdrop, Inside the Canberra Press Gallery - Life in

the Wedding Cake of Old Parliament House sheds

light on the inner workings of an institution critical to the health of our

parliamentary democracy.

Rob Chalmers (1929-2011) entered the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery in

1951 as a twenty-one-year-old reporter for the now-defunct Sydney Daily Mirror and would retire from

political commentary 60 years later - an unprecedented career span in

Australian political history. No parliamentary figure - politician,

bureaucrat or journalist
can match Chalmers’ experience, from his first

Question Time on 7 March 1951 until, desperately ill, he reluctantly retired

from editing the iconic newsletter Inside Canberra sixty years, four months

and eighteen days later.

As well as being considered a shrewd political analyst, Chalmers was a

much-loved member of the gallery and a past president of the National Press

Club. Rob Chalmers used to boast that he had outlasted 11 prime ministers;

and a 12th, Julia Gillard described him as ‘one of the greats’ of Australian

political journalism upon his passing. Rob Chalmers is survived by his wife

Gloria and two children from a previous marriage, Susan and Rob jnr.