Back in May 1999, the bureaucrats who run Parliament House vowed to get rid of John Howard’s furniture at midnight on the day he resigned and replace it with the furniture specifically commissioned for the Prime Minister’s suite in the new building. No kidding. They told me. Well, he didn’t resign, he was turfed out. And they didn’t keep their promise. But Kevin 07 has done it for them.

The midnight promise was made after the Chairs Affair – when John and Janette got rid of the armchairs designed by the building’s chief architect, Aldo Giurgola, to accompany a coffee table made by Tasmanian designer-maker Kevin Perkins – a photo of which accompanied a front page story in The Australian today, but without reference to the designers.

The Chairs Affair began after the original, orange coloured chairs were sent for repair.

Mrs Howard insisted her husband had a replacement instead, “something all-leather … very traditional and conservative.”

Joint House Department architect David Thomas told a Senate Estimates committee hearing in May 1999. Representatives of architects, Mitchell/Giurgola & Thorp, protested in a meeting so heated that a top dog had to write a grovelling letter to Janette because she was so upset. But Joint House Department secretary Mike Bolton told the Estimates Committee it wasn’t an apology, it expressed “my concerns if she thought the meeting was less than satisfactory.”

Perkins won the plum commission to design the furniture for the Prime Ministerial office, and it was his myrtle and jarrah desk that was banished in favour of Ming’s. Perkins promptly branded the PM as “aesthetically bankrupt.” He had spent three years working on the commission for the desk, furniture and Huon pine wood panneling, which Giurgola praised as outstanding. “I have seldom seen such perfection,” he said.

Howard has form. In 1988, he ditched the desk and furniture commissioned for office of the Leader of the Opposition.. It was made by another leading Tasmanian furniture designer-maker, John Smith.

Howard declared it to “too modern.” Beazley promised to put it back, but didn’t. With any luck, Brendan Nelson will take a leaf out of Kevin’s book and reinstall the Smith furniture.