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PARLIAMENT OPENS TODAYHundreds of years of parliamentary tradition will feature prominently during the opening of the 42nd Parliament in Canberra today (12 February).Following a Welcome to Country ceremony for members and senators in Members’ Hall at 9am, the Clerk of the House of Representatives, Ian Harris, and Clerk of the Senate, Harry Evans, will begin proceedings in their respective chambers at 10.30am by reading the proclamation from the Governor-General, Major General Michael Jeffery, calling Parliament together. In the House, the Usher of the Black Rod will arrive from the Senate to invite the 150 House MPs to the Senate chamber to hear the Governor-General’s appointed deputy, the Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, Anthony Murray Gleeson, declare open the 42nd Parliament at 10:40am. The MPs returned to the House at about 10:55am to be sworn in and then elect their new Speaker Harry Jenkins (Federal Member for Scullin, VIC). Once the new Speaker was elected, he was dragged “unwillingly” to the Speaker’s Chair (centuries ago Speakers in the United Kingdom risked being beheaded by the Monarchy), and then the Mace was placed on the Table to signify the House of Representatives is properly constituted. The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, informed the House that the new Speaker and the other MPs will be presented to the Governor-General at 2.30pm in the Members’ Hall. The Usher of the Black Rod knocked three times on the chamber door before announcing the members are required in the Senate to hear the Governor-General’s opening speech. This speech is a formal declaration of the causes for the calling together of the Parliament, which outlines the agenda of the 42nd Parliament. His speech was followed by a 19-gun artillery salute fired from Federation Mall at about 3:50pm. “Whereas many nations have endured bloody battles to secure their democracies, we are fortunate that the stable democracy we have enjoyed for more than a century was founded through peaceful negotiation and vote. The parliamentary procedures and traditions we inherited from Westminster in some way represent the bullet holes of our democracy,” Clerk of the House Ian Harris says. The new Parliament will sit for two weeks until Friday 22 February.
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